Today we’re going to look at some combined
mobility and stretching exercises to improve
your wrist extension.
One of the most common complaints that we
get in a traditional fitness setting is a
lack of wrist extension or people that have
pain when they’re doing a push up or maybe
they are catching a bar or doing a front squat,
etc.
One of the big issues is an inability to extend
the wrist.
Basically wrist extension means if my palm
is facing down, I point my fingers up at the
ceiling and then my fingers come back toward
my elbow.
That’s wrist extension.
If I’m in a push up or if I’m in a handstand
push up or if I’m doing anything with a
bar where I’m having to catch it up here
a lot of people with wrist stiffness complain
of pain in those particular movements.
I hear it across the board from people that
do Olympic weight lifting, power lifting,
kettle bells, yoga, etc.
What I want to show you today is just a really
simple progression of a combination of elbow
mobility with some basic gentle stretching
of the wrists to help improve this issue.
I want to go carefully as we do these.
The wrist whether you think so or not is kind
of a delicate structure.
There’s a bunch of different bones in here
called carpals, a lot of ligaments, a lot
of things that can go badly wrong if you over
do this.
I want you to think safety first and gentle
first.
As we go through this, if you don’t feel
anything super intense, that’s good.
I usually try to get people when they’re
working on the wrist or nerves or anything
else that tends to be a little more fragile,
think about a 3 out of 10 intensity level
as we go through the exercises.
To get us started I want to make sure that
you know how to do a basic elbow circle.
So I’m going to lift my left arm.
I’m going to do a loose fist.
I’m going to bring my hand toward my face.
I’m going to try to keep my humorous, this
bone up here from going out.
I’m going to pull my bicep in.
As my hand goes out I’m going to lock my
elbow.
Then I’m going to roll my hand down again
and I just repeat that.
It’s really important that you do a full
lock of the elbow and as you come up try to
get a full bend of the elbow, as well, to
make sure that we’re maximizing the mobility
here.
Now come back out here, palm down, turn your
thumb to the outside and just reverse that.
We want to make sure that we work the elbow
in both directions.
All right?
The reason I’m showing you that is when
we’re doing the wrist work, we’re going
to be doing elbow circles and they’re going
to look more like that rather than this, because
our hand is going to be fixed on this bench.
Let’s go ahead and go down.
I’m going to show you exactly what I want
you to do to combine some elbow mobility with
some basic stretching of the wrist.
Our basic setup is going to be pretty simple.
I’m using a low bench here.
It is very possible to do this kneeling on
the floor in an all fours position.
You can also do it against the wall.
The main goal here is make sure that you can
be in a position that is comfortable with
the amount of wrist extension that you have
available.
The better your wrist extension becomes, the
more weight you can add to it, etc.
Again, think safety first, level 3 out of
a level 10 intensity.
What I’m going to do is come into a kneeling
position so that you can see this more easily.
The first thing that we’re going to focus
on is we’re going to spread our fingers,
get the palm of our hand completely in contact
with the surface and we’re going to start
to do some small elbow circles.
All right?
I have very little stretch right now into
extension because my shoulder is directly
over my hand.
For me, because I have pretty good wrist extension,
if I wanted to increase the intensity of the
stretch, I’m going to have to move my shoulder
toward my fingers.
Right now to learn, I’m just going to be
back here and I just want to work on these
basic full elbow circles.
I try to extend them a little bit, make them
a little bit bigger.
Having done that, the next thing I’m going
to do is take my opposite hand and put it
on top of my other hand.
In essence I’m going to push that into the
table a little better into the bench and I’m
going to extend a little.
I’m going to bring my shoulder toward my
fingers and then from here I will start doing
my elbow circles again.
What’s nice about having the second hand
is that I can use it prevent this portion
of my palm from coming up.
Usually what happens is people start to work
on their extension and start to do some additional
work, this portion of the palm starts to lift
up and it reduces the intensity of the exercise.
Again you’re just using the weight of this
hand, weight of this arm to stabilize this
hand on the bench or floor or wall and you’re
just going to continue to do your basic elbow
circles.
What I typically will do is I’ll do one,
two, three, lean into it.
Opposite direction, one, two, three, lean
into it.
Usually, again, because I’ve been working
on these for quite some time, the more that
I do that, I can do maybe 9-12 repetitions
and have a pretty good level of extension
that allows me to work doing whatever I want
to in a gym setting.
If you have tight wrists, you may have to
do somewhere around 20-30 repetitions of this,
again, taking it very, very slow and making
sure that you’re keeping the intensity at
3 out of 10, otherwise you put too much stress
into the wrist and you start to give yourself
problems.
The basics are start off nice and easy.
Shoulder probably behind the hand or directly
over the hand.
You’re going to do some basic elbow circles
in each direction.
Three or four in each direction.
As you start to feel warmed up, move the shoulder
forward a little bit to get a stretch in the
hand and then cover the wrist and hand with
the opposite hand and just keep repeating
your three circles, a little stretch, three
circles, now opposite direction and a little
stretch.
That’s the basics.
If you have any questions about this, let
us know.
Otherwise good luck and I hope it helps your
push ups.
