Wrist Pain? Might Be Your Push-Ups
Wrist pain sucks. It’s often sharp, sometimes dull and prevents us from doing everyday things when flared up.
In today’s world of texting and typing on a laptop, there’s no surprise that the general population is dealing with wrist issues. If you sat at a desk for 8–10 hours with your wrists pronated over a keyboard without any variation to your movement, your wrists would definitely develop some tightness.
If you look at the anatomy of the wrists, there is ALOT of players dedicated to the game of motion for the wrist.
The amount of ligaments, bones, joints, and things we both can’t pronounce, I look at this joint as a very high maintenance joint for daily performance. For our wrists to move optimally there has be a beautiful harmony and synchronization of every single bone, joint, ligament, and muscle to have happy and healthy wrists.
In my experience, ever since I took my FRC course and we went over controlled articular rotations for the wrist, I quickly realized my left wrist had poor wrist extension compared to my right. I was surprised I never noticed and began to think if it has ever affected me day to day.
Dr. Andreo Spina mentioned that one of his pet peeves was people posting handstand push-ups on Instagram when they have no business in doing so. He said, “most people don’t have the adequate amount of wrist extension to do so.”
The moment he mentioned this, I automatically thought of random “wrist pulls” I’ve experienced anytime I was performing a warm-up, and I’d get a painful pulling feeling from the bottom of my wrist all the way up towards my ring finger on my left hand. This same sensation would sometimes pop up during racked barbell front squats which puts the wrists into harsh extension, and sometimes when I’d perform and overhead barbell press. The clues started to stack up, and I was determined to “fix” my mobility issue.
But, we get into what I did and before you start diagnosing your wrist condition and end up into the deep pages of the internet on WebMD and stumble upon your final diagnosis of having wrist cancer, let’s maybe switch up your push up position first?
Most people have horrendous looking push-up form, and it’s all about the setup.
Here’s a quick tutorial on how I coach my clients how to perform perfect pushups:
A couple of things to note when performing perfect push-ups is hand position, elbow motion, and shoulder position.
Most beginners make the mistakes leaving their hands “floppy” without any tension. When there’s an energy leak in any exercise, you’re leaving a lot on the table that could be used to gain benefit from the exercise optimally. When the hands don’t engage with the floor, the hands can easily rotate into a strange pattern and place stress on the wrists where it shouldn’t be.
When performing push-ups, you want to think of “corkscrewing” the ground actively. Think of placing your hands straight on the floor and when performing the push-up actively rotate your wrists clockwise without moving your hand. This motion will engage your lats, keeping the core tight during the movement, and most importantly putting the wrists in a stable position.
Elbows also have a significant role in wrist comfort in the push-up as well. Most beginners make the mistake of letting the elbows flare out to the side. This repetitive motion puts a lot of stress on the wrists, elbows and even shoulders which down the road can cause some problems.
You want to ensure your elbows descend in a 45-degree angle. If you watch the video above, you’ll notice my elbows almost aim towards the wall behind me. This motion allows more muscle activation through the lats, whereas when you let your elbows to flare out sideways, you lose tension, and your push-up will eventually fall apart.
Shoulders are the last line of defense when it comes to pain-free push-ups. Placing your shoulders in line with your elbows and wrists is the BEST way to keep your joints happy. Most beginners make the mistake of shifting their weight back. You’ll notice that people will do this when the push-up motion becomes difficult, this is an indicator usually that they went past their threshold, or maybe they would be better served on an elevated surface.
I see it way too often when coaches just automatically place their clients off the floor to perform push-ups, and they end up looking half-assed, half repetitions performed, with their weight shifted back with their ass up.
I believe that the quality and control of an exercise that a client performs is the reflection of the coach.
If it looks messy and all over the place, that is a direct correlation of the coach’s character.
In a perfect world, after playing around with body position and changing up the form of the push-up, there wouldn’t be any pain in the exercise. But, we all know, that’s usually not the case.
There’s a couple of things I like to do for my clients to see them succeed:
1. Changing the hand to a neutral position.
Simply but using push-ups bars, dumbbells (that are not round) paralette bars, or a barbell on a squat rack, are all wrist friendly variations for the push-up.
I start all my clients with a barbell on a squat rack, and as they progress, I lower the height of the barbell. Most general population clients don’t have adequate wrist extension, so I don’t bother beating a “round peg into a square hole.”
The other reason why I like using the barbell for push-ups is teaching the client how to create tension throughout the body. I think it’s safe to say that someone who is new to the gym, one of the limiting factors is teaching them whole body tension on specific exercises. I enjoy finding creative ways to layer this in from the beginning, so when it comes to a heavy deadlift they understand what I mean when I say “brace, create tension, break the bar,” etc.
2. Wrist CARS and PAILS and RAILS
Performing wrist controlled articular rotations and PAILS and RAILS daily can dramatically improve the range of motion in someone’s wrist.
The moment I realized I lacked extension in of my wrists I went to work daily to improve it. Then, after a couple of months, I had a dramatic change, and no more pain in my warm-ups if I perform push-ups, or had any barbell front squats and presses overhead.
I prescribe my clients who have significant wrist limitations to do these daily:
Wrist CARS
Wrist PAILS and RAILS
Overall, the wrist is a complex joint that requires a lot of love and attention. The majority of us even in the fitness industry tend to forget how integral our wrists are in every exercise. By leaving the wrists’ integrity behind, we leave a huge leak of performance behind as well. I firmly believe that if we treat our wrists as important as our shoulders, hips and lower back, we’d see a considerable spike in better movement and function.
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