Chris Cox on wrist health: First - Stretching. I do something similar to this every day, and before every handstand. I really like that Antranik emphasizes straight elbows for all these stretches. Being comfortable with your elbows locked and supporting a load (be it your body or someone elses) is super important for hand stands, hand to hand, gymnastics, etc. Its the equivalent of bone stacking in acroyoga. Be sure to watch both part 1 and 2. One thing he doesnt show that I really like is while my hand is planted, fingers forward, to stretch flexors, is rolling my elbow pits inwards and outwards. I gain about 10-15* of range of motion from that specifically. youtu.be/VwQ5E0DeaoQ youtu.be/vF-TSRynhpw ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Second - Prehab/Strengthening. The rice bucket. Youve seen real life ninja monks do it. Youve seen baseball players do it. Ive seen a couple hand balancers do it and its pretty awesome. Its pretty low impact and Im currently doing it like 4 days a week. And its like $10 in materials. $8 for a 20lb bag of rice at walmart, $2 for a 5 gallon bucket. Just watch out for drying out your hands and getting those annoying lil shreds of skin just above your cuticles, clip them back or youll just tear your fingertips up more. youtube/watch?v=dhNDPD4gxpc ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Third - Flexbar. Essentially a dense piece of rubber latex (watch out latex sensitive people) that you twist in various ways to strengthen the wrist/forearms/grip. Typically used for rehab, but I like it for a bit of strength training with it. Its like $18 on amazon. Id recommend the blue for stronger people, green for slightly less strong. The videos on youtube kind of suck, so just ask and Ill show you how I train with it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fourth - Massage. With knuckles, knees, lacrosse balls... This video is pretty awesome. If your forearms are feeling tight, combine this with some stretching. Makes all the difference in the world. youtu.be/bYH4jeR4G7o ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fifth - Get inverted. If the only time you do handstands is when your base/flyer wants to do hand to hands... youre gonna have a bad time. Do frog stands where you lean your body weight forward and push yourself back to neutral through the finger tips. Do handstands against the wall and push yourself toward/away from the wall through the wrists. Do handstand wall runs to strengthen scapular elevation and get used to one arm supporting your body weight (this is a lil more advanced, and can be seen here youtu.be/1okSA32sFWs ). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Like I said, these are the supplemental things I do for my wrists/forearms. This is not an entirely altruistic PSA. Its actually pretty selfish. While I really do truly want everyone to have strong healthy wrists, I also hate when the other persons (or my own!) wrists collapse during a hand to hand. Instead of each of us supporting 50% of the weight of the flier, now one person has to support 100% of the weight of the flier. This sucks. Please, think of the wrists.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 18:28:29 +0000
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