Wrist wraps prevents wrists from getting stronger?

[Jan Vartovnik]

Hi guys, i have this dillema.I couldnt do advanced frog stand and i thought that im not strong enough yet but as today showed up, it was my wrists.Im tall with small joints and thin bones and girl like wrists.I was stucked between frog stand and tuck planche for quite some time becose of wrist pain when trying to hyperextend them as thay should during this excercise and today when i was trying the advanced frog stand i found gym gloves with wrist support from my bodybuilding times so i tried them and with wrapped wrists i was able to hold 10 sec advanced frog stand without any problem!My question is : do you think that wrist wraps prevents wrists from getting stronger by adding external support to them?What would you do on my place?Im thinking about buying some wrist wraps and later ease of using them to be completely wraps free.What do you think?

Thanks for suggestions

[Coach Sommer]

There are a few people, who regardless of the amount of time they spend on wrist prep, will always require the aid of wrist wraps.

One of my senior athletes is one of them. Otherwise he is quite strong, with a solid Iron Cross, Cross Pulls and almost has his maltese. However, despite having done all of my wrist preparation for many years, his wrists have always remained tender. The use of the wrist blocks allows him to sidestep this issue and continue to progress with the rest of his training.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

[Jan Vartovnik]

I was hoping for your raction Coach Sommer! thank you

[Graham Smith]

I agree with the Coach on this one (not that I would be arrogant enough to disagree )

Supports are useful when you are using your muscles at absolute maximum capacity, when I used to rock climb, I would tape my fingers to support the tendons, I wouldn't do this in training, but that is because I wasn't pushing my fingers as hard during training. If you are training a planche, I would imagine that you are doing it to train the large muscles such as your shoulders, back and core, your wrists just happen to be the weakest link. Jumping into planche training purely as a wrist strengthening exercise, would be like a beginner jogger trying to sprint a marathon to increase fitness. So by all means train your planche for the larger muscles, supporting your wrists as you are pushing them at the limit, but then do some specific appropriately scaled exercises just for your wrists, unsupported. An olympic lifter may well wear a back support in order to train his legs for example, but then will do specific back strengthening exercises that don't push the legs as well. Even supported, planche training WILL strengthen your wrists to some extent.

The key is to appropriately scale for the particular weakness. I tore my AC joint and long head of biceps tendon some months ago, and at the recommendation of my physiotherapist, started to do sets of pushups first standing vertically against a wall, then leaning towards the wall (standing a little further away), then when I was ready, doing pushups leaning against a table, followed by kneeling on the floor, followed by regular pushups when I was capable. This was very frustrating for me, but was incredibly effective at giving my weak and recovering shoulder the right amount of resistance without overdoing it. I have taken to using the same progression for Coach's wrist pushups, they are far too difficult for me to do on the floor, but I am working towards that incrementally. I am able to perform the recommended sets and reps, but scaled to a more suitable resistance to my current strength level

Also as coach says, some people will always need supports, wrist anatomy is very complex and very variable