You can have strong wrists and still sprain them, but stronger wrists are less likely to be severely sprained. Here’s how to make your wrists stronger.
Plus, a strong wrist will recover better from a sprain.
Here’s something you should know: There is no such thing as strengthening only the wrist.
To strengthen this joint area, you must work the forearms.
This can be done in a variety of ways.
Anyone, even “out of shape” people, can benefit from the following exercises.
How to Strengthen the Forearms
Wrist rolls with a dumbbell. Sit at the edge of a bench, light dumbbell in hand, palm facing ceiling.
Shutterstock/Philip Date
Let the dumbbell roll toward your fingertips, then bring it back to the palms. Keep doing this till you can’t any longer.
If this is too difficult, or, another option, is to keep the dumbbell fixed in place, and simply bend your wrist up and down.
How much weight to use will very from one person to the next.
Reverse hand position and bend the wrist up and down while holding the weight.
Another option is wrist rolls with a bar.
Farmer’s walks. Walk around for three minutes holding dumbbells with your arms straight at your sides.
Men can start out with 20 pound dumbbells, while women can start out with 10 pounders. The prolonged hold on the weights will strengthen the forearms and wrists.
If after about three minutes you don’t feel much fatigue in your wrists, then use heavier weight next time. The weights can also be plates or kettlebells.
If you do sprain your wrist, a wrist brace (as shown below) will help it heal.
Shutterstock/belushi
My first sprain (from volleyball) healed quickly. My second one (volleyball), which was worse, was not healing despite icing and immobilization from a brace.
It really hurt at the slightest rotary motion, as in proceeding to turn on the ignition of my car. I had to do that with my left hand.
I went to a doctor and she told me that the problem was that I wasn’t moving it. Yes…that I WASN’T.
It was time to end the complete immobilization and gradually work back into moving the joint.
I moved it to the left several times, then the right several times.
Up several times, then down several times … several sessions like this throughout the day.
Voila, the first day I noticed a marked improvement. Within several days my wrist was practically back to normal.
Additional exercises for strengthening your wrist include the deadlift, any pulling movements such as with weight machines in which you pull the handles towards your chest, and using hand grips.
