Fast Fitness - Prevent Wrist Pain During Pushups and Cooking
Friday, February 08, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Good positioning and strength is more effective than splinting wrists straight and restricting activity. Learn to distribute weight across your whole hand:
- While sitting or standing, press your right wrist and hand backward strongly using your left hand. Feel the right wrist compress under the weight of the other hand.
- Now use your right hand and forearm muscles to press forward against the left hand. You should feel the compression come off the right wrist.
- Hold a pushup position. Use this technique so that, regardless of your weight, instead of letting your weight compress your wrists, you use your hand and forearm muscles. Keep weight distributed across your entire hand, not just on the heel of the hand.
Use this to learn how to press with your whole hand whenever you use your wrists - for weightlifting, for standing on your hands, for typing, driving, biking, playing piano, and during cooking and cleaning.---
Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail" (under trumpet) upper right.
For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify through DrBookspan.com/Academy. See Dr. Bookspan's Books.
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Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail" (under trumpet) upper right.
For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify through DrBookspan.com/Academy. See Dr. Bookspan's Books.
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Photo © copyright by Dr. Jolie Bookspan from the book Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery
Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, biking, fast fitness, fix pain, hand, strength, wrist, yoga
4 Comments:
At Thursday, February 07, 2008 5:59:00 PM,
Anonymous said…
Iam sure you dont get this question a lot, but how do you decrease the muscle in your legs. I have always been a runner, and was restrictive with my eating, once I started eating more I feel like I bulked up in my legs despite running alot ( i have always had lean legs.) I dont have weight to loss to be honest, meaning on the scale, but I just want to lose the muscle or lean out my legs. Have you ever seen this happen to someone before?
Thanks,
Christie
At Thursday, February 07, 2008 9:05:00 PM,
Anonymous said…
Thanks for this info/suggestion. I have wrist problems and it's been hard to undertand how not to dump into the wrists while doing yoga. I think I'm just beginning to feel the difference that you are describing. Perhaps if my arm muscles were stronger I could do this more effectively.
At Sunday, March 14, 2010 8:27:00 AM,
Susan said…
My yoga teacher uses a cue that I love: in plank or downward dog, make sure the "index mound," i.e., the head of the second metacarpal, touches the mat. This will ensure that your weight is in your hands and not your wrists. Most of us keep our forearms in an unhealthy external rotation that makes this placement difficult until we practice it.
At Tuesday, March 16, 2010 2:46:00 PM,
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM said…
Anonymous, Come to a class so I can see you and what you are doing in person - www.DrBookspan.com/classes.
tabletoo, Good work checking and making the difference. Keep getting stronger using this.
Susan, Shifting weight from the wrist bones to the bottom of the knuckle bones isn't the best, although I know that is a common instruction in yoga. The idea is to get weight off the bones. I also see students all the time with their fingers cupped off the floor because of this instruction. Cupping isn't from tight forearms, as they claim (palm stretch helps more). I am aware that arm external rotation is often discouraged in yoga, but it is not unhealthy and does not have to prevent good hand placement. Just put your whole hand flat on the floor. Preventing rotation does not prevent damage to the shoulder in downward dog, does not prevent compressing the wrist bones, or shift weight to the hands.
Downward dog is often highly over-complicated in yoga, with many complicated words for doing things that hurt, or preventing motions that do not matter. Downward dog came from a simple Indian wrestling stretch. Keep it simple.
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