Who doesn’t love the push up? An iconic, classic exercise that can be done anywhere, anytime and carries a host of benefits. A very common complaint on the push up is that it hurts the wrist, the hands flat on the floor can problematic for many.
There are a great many workarounds for this to allow you perform push ups, the simplest is to simply do them on a closed fist, or you can use dumbbells, push up handles, parallettes etc.
As a coach, I’d much rather you didn’t require a workaround, I’d much rather you trained the body to be able to assume the position. In doing so hopefully resolving any problems in the wrist.
Working the hands and wrists is an important yet overlooked part of training. Especially as most people no longer use their hands to their potential due to white collar jobs and urban living.
Those that I work with who perform more manual labour jobs don’t tend to have the same issues as the desk workers. Grapplers less than punchers. Climbers less than mountain bikers.
My point is we need to work the hands and wrists through a variety of planes of motion if we plan on keeping them healthy and strong.
This instagram video shows a very simple and highly effective mobility exercise that we all should be doing:
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Dave Hedges (@dave_hedges) on May 29, 2019 at 3:23am PDT
I’d suggest working these daily if possible, they also work great as active rest between non grip intensive lifts.
If you stick them in your warm up (highly recommended) then follow them with the Pump exercise (a more dynamic Up-Down Dog from Yoga), this will tie the wrist and scapula together and get you ready for just about anything, here’s a previous blog post on the Pump:
If you want more on mobilising the hands and wrists to get keep them strong and healthy, I’ve a video tutorial available on Vimeo on Demand, you can get that by clicking on this image:
a Video course
And that’s all for today.
Chat soon
Dave Hedges