wrist strain in handstand position

[Eric Heiden]

Hi everybody,

I know this topic has been done to death on here and that 95% of the time the answer is rest, be patient, and do the coach's wrist series, but I haven't been able to find a post with my particular issue so I thought I'd ask for advice/see if anyone has had this experience as well.

My left wrist has been preventing my from doing handstand work (without PB or pushups bars) since last Saturday, which is bugging me. I was trying to do a 10 minute Handstand work set (I've been doing the WODs for ~2 weeks+) and around minute 5 I had to come down and stop because a tendon in my left wrist felt strained:

As soon as I approach anywhere near full extended wrist position (wrist extension) I feel strain (sometimes painful, sometimes just a sensation of tension) in what feels like one of the tendons in my wrist, just below the base of my hand, somewhere near the middle of my wrist. This has obviously affected (read: stopped) my progress on PL work (Frog stand) and a variety of other FBEs. Since the wrist tweak I've been doing very gentle wrist pushups and some light massage to my forearm and have been doing any/all handstand work (mostly just box HeSPUs) with the use of two low pushup bars which don't cause any discomfort.

Are there wrist positions in the HS that are more likely to give me this kind of a problem? If so - are there less injury prone positions?

I know from climbing that tendon injuries just mostly take time more than anything to heal, but does anyone have any suggestions as far as expediting recovery and/or strengthening my wrist to prevent this from happening again? I've read through many wrist threads but mostly they seem to be mostly about ulnar and radial deviation issues.

[Brendan Coad]

If you google it you can usually find anatomy pictures that have areas highlighted that would better illustrate where the pain is. It might help get you some specific recommendations. I'm mostly asking out of curiosity because what you describe sounds like it could be what I went through about a year ago. Although my pain was more around the middle of the forearm. Bottom line for me was I had to take it easy and slowly build up the strength in the wrists.

What worked pretty well for me while I was incapacitated was warming up with handstands on the PB to get my wrists warmed up. then I could do limited floor work without any pain as long as I didn't push too much.

[Eric Heiden]

It feels like a pulling strain on one of the flexor tendons - somewhere around the red circled area in this drawing: