How to Avoid Wrist Pain from Exercising

When it comes to talking about exercise, most of the time, people discuss the benefits – that it’s good for our mental health, our cardiovascular system, our bones, etc. 

But what’s often left out of these conversations is the need to protect your joints while performing exercise. While, in most cases, being active will help your joints remain healthy and functioning, it’s also important that you keep them safe and avoid the risk of sprains, injuries, or chronic conditions. 

In this article, we’re going to talk about wrist pain in particular and what you can do to prevent it from occurring. In most cases, these injuries happen due to either overuse or traumatic falls, but if you begin feeling your wrists hurting, it’s a definite sign that you’re doing something wrong. Taking action proactively and protecting your wrists as soon as you feel a possible injury is the best way to proceed in this situation, and in the paragraphs below, we’re going to be helping you with advice on how to do just that. 

5 Things You Can Do To Protect Your Wrists 

If you train regularly and you perform movements where your wrists are put under stress, it’s a good idea to find ways to protect them. Otherwise, you’re at a risk of chronic injury – one that might make working out more unpleasant and might hamper your entire routine. Having that in mind, let’s take a look at five ways you can protect your wrists during exercise.

Use Protective Wrist Gear

Having wrist supporting gear is one of the best ways to prevent injuries from happening. That’s also the reason why most contact sports have specific gear requirements designed to prevent major impact from falls or overuse. So our advice is, next time you’re heading towards the gym, try taping up your wrists with kinesiology tape or simply get a wrist wrap that will help keep your joints stable, even during heavy weightlifting sessions. Even if you don’t consider yourself an athlete, using protective gear will help keep you injury-free and make your workouts much safer. 

Build Wrist Strength and Stability

One of the best ways to prevent injuries is by ensuring that your wrists are stronger and more stable. If you’re facing chronic issues with that part of your body, it might be a good idea to start incorporating specific wrist-related exercises into your routine so you can build muscle and strengthen the area. 

Always Perform Exercises With Proper Form

Performing your exercises with the correct form will effectively reduce any unnecessary stress on your joints. When it comes to wrist pain, in particular, avoiding wrist pain happens when you make sure to keep your wrists stable during the entire exercise without overextending them. If you notice that your form is off and you’re starting to feel some pain in your wrist area, either lower the weight and increase the reps or just skip the movement during this training session. 

Modify Your Exercises 

Some movements are more difficult to do than others, especially if we lack mobility in that area of our body. For example, some people find that push-ups cause their wrists to get sore, while others feel their grip slipping once they try to lift a certain weight. The way to combat that long-term is by working on increasing strength and mobility; however, in the short run, the best thing you can do is to modify the exercises and swap them for ones that cause no stress to your joints. The key idea here is to progress at a pace that feels comfortable to you and that your body can handle. 

Don’t Forget to Cool Down and Warm Up 

We’re all constantly in a hurry to get from one place to the next. And so, more often than not, it feels like a waste of time to cool down after workouts or to warm up prior to them. However, the reality is that by taking the time to get your blood flowing before a workout, you give your muscles the necessary time to warm up and be more prepared for training, thus minimizing the chances of injury. The same applies to cooldowns – these five extra minutes will ensure your muscles are stretched and primed to begin recovery. 

In Conclusion

If you want to workout for years to come and you truly want to keep your body happy and healthy, you have to do injury prevention work. Hopefully, this article helped you pick up on the most key ways to maintain your wrists injury-free and ready for more training sessions.

As always, if you have any tips and tricks you want to share with us from personal experience, please leave them in the comments below – we’d love to hear them.