A couple of you have pointed out that your wrists are in pain when you come into the gym. Exercises like pushups, cleans, front squats, or snatches will all put various kinds of strain or stress on your wrists. Although wrists are pretty consistently indicators of something larger being really restricted, it does feel good to take the stress of the localized area in the mean time.

This is an article from Olympic Weightlifting Guru, a blog dedicated to helping people learn the more difficult lifts we do at CrossFit 858.

I broke one of my wrists in college. A guy got mad that I beat him in the air for a catch, so he clipped my feet out from under before I landed. Ended up in the ER with both the radius and the ulna broken a centimeter below the wrist joint. Everything healed up nicely and although PT wasn’t very much fun, it was soon over.

Fast forward seven years and I walk into my first Crossfit class featuring this thing called an Overhead Squat. Soon it began to feel like someone had jammed a knife into my stretched and hyper extended wrists.

I quickly learned my PT and doctor were more concerned with basic functionality, not solid movement to help me stretch and get stronger. I had some work left on the table. Lots of stretching, lots of upper back, shoulder, scap and forearm mobility. Much of what I recommend to people with the same issues. Wrists so often become the catch-all for anything else “upstream.”

The videos on the link offer some good, easy to do stretches that should help out. Also you might consider looking at a nice pair of wrist wraps. A couple of good styles are here and here. These will mostly offer support to the wrist, but they also cloud the bodies pain response by spreading out the feeling. Hear that I did not say make things better. Mobility and stretching will be necessary for any long term results.

Happy lifting – Coach Jared