Wrist pain after handstands

[NC-GymGirl]

I was a gymnast about 3 years ago then took a break due to an ankle injury and to focus on school work. I recently started back again and now everytime I do anything that involves prolonged weight on my wrists (especially handstands), I have a severe dull ache in my wrists- it almost feels like they can't support ny weight and I always have to stop becase I know if I don't my weight is going to flip me over my wrists and they will break (it has happened before). The intense pain stops after the activity does but for the next few days they are sore and stiff. Any was to prevent this pain or deal with it?

 

[10.0]

Anything that causes you "severe pain" should be seen by a doctor. No one can give you medical advice. Have it checked out first and maybe ask your doctor would recomend wearing wrist supports, tiger paws are really good. But please make sure you figure out the reason before you trash your wrists for good.

 

[BlairBob]

Your wrists have been de conditioned after not doing gymnastics for 3 years.

Add some wrist warmup stuff before you work on HS or do some every day. Your wrists need to get stronger and are currently too weak.

Start off with doing wrist rotations with a very light DB or a stick. Warmup with holding straight arm planks or basic bar supports or bear walks or inchworms (standing pike walkout to plank walkin to standing pike).

 

[Galadriel]

Another option while your wrists are strengthening up that our boys coach used to recommend to little ones was to mainly develop strength in handstands and levers on parallettes or those 'push up handles' you can buy and use at home, so the wrists of young gymnasts were in a straight position, but the strength is stil being developed.
With the wrist rotation thing Blairbob suggested - he developed it...
- like having a rope attached to a pole (eg cut down broom handle), and tying this to a bucket with water in it, and lifting the bucket by rotating the pole with your wrists - up, and then down (sorry for bad description if you dont understand!),
- also putting a sheet of newspaper on a flat surface, keeping your hand flat in one corner, and scrunching up the newspaper into a ball!
A bit way out(!) but did seem to help wrist strength!

 

[Geoffrey Taucer]

As 10.0 said, the best person to ask about stuff like this is always a doctor, and generally our policy is not to allow medical questions.

However, we have said that general discussion about injury prevention and joint strengthening is acceptable, and since wrist pain is a common problem among gymnasts, I think it could be beneficial to have a topic to discuss wrist exercises and injury prevention.

For the moment, I'll allow this discussion to continue, though I will be bringing this up with bog and we may well end up locking this thread later..

However, I want to emphasize again that if the pain is severe enough to cause you problems, it would be a good idea to check with a doctor or physical therapist to make sure you don't have any other problems which could potentially be made worse.