Wrist Exercises: How to Strengthen Your Wrists

Exercising and building strength in your wrists tends to be a somewhat overlooked area, despite it being an important part of any workout routine. The wrists play a central part in a large number of sports - tennis, baseball, basketball, cricket and many more - and if you play those sports, you simply cannot afford for your wrists to be weak or in less than peak physical shape. This article will look at a few of the best ways to strengthen your wrists and show you how easy it can be!

Train correctly and diligently and I can guarantee you'll see results. This is truly something anyone can do. If you don't have any weights, don't worry. Further down in this article, I'll show you how you can exercise your hands, wrists and forearms using something else.

The most common wrist exercise is known as the wrist curl. Its purpose is to develop and strengthen the wrist flexor muscles of the forearm and should ideally be performed together with the reverse wrist curl to ensure equal muscle development. Although it's entirely possible to use barbells for these exercises, this article is only going to look at using dumbbells. Make sure you use relatively light weights, light enough that you can do a fair few repetitions before getting tired. Let's look at how to do these.

In a sitting position, grasp a dumbbell with an underhand grip and rest your forearm on your thigh. Your wrist should protrude out beyond your knee, allowing free movement up and down. Now, slowly allow your wrist to drop downwards before bringing it up again as high as you can without lifting your forearm from your thigh. Repeat this movement for 10-15 repetitions.

The following video demonstrates the wrist curl.

Very similar to the wrist curl mentioned above. The only difference this time is that you're reversing your grip on the dumbbell. This means that you'll be holding it in an overhand grip, with your palm facing downwards. In the same sitting position with your forearm on your thighs and your wrist protruding, grip the dumbbell and allow your wrist to drop down. Raise it back up as far as you can without pain or discomfort and repeat for 10 - 15 repetitions.

This next video demonstrates the reverse wrist curl.

Ideally, wrist curls and reverse wrist curls should be integrated into your normal workout routine. They don't take long and will compliment your other exercises well. Once you've got the hang of them, you can start thinking about increasing the weight slightly - only slightly, remember, repetitions are what's important - and perhaps upping the number of repetitions you do. If you experience pain or too much discomfort, reduce the weight and number of repetitions.

If you're looking for a bit of variety in your wrist exercises, allow me to briefly mention something that will help strengthen your wrists and allow you to have a bit of fun too! The Dynaflex Pro Sports Gyro Wrist Exerciser is essentially a gyro that you grip with your hand and spin up using your wrist. By rotating your wrist more, the gyro spins faster, exerting more force on your wrist and forearm and subsequently meaning you have to use more strength to control it. As your strength increases, you can spin the gyro faster and faster, allowing you to get more and more out of it. You'll be exercising the gripping muscles in your hand, your wrist, forearm and biceps. As an additional benefit, this little gadget can be used to relieve various wrist and hand-related medical conditions such as Repetitive Strain Injury and Carpal Tunnel.

Manufactured by Dynaflex in the US, these devices are known as Powerballs elsewhere. Some of them even come with speedometers attached so you can see how many RPM you've managed to get it to! Trying to beat your own record (or those of your friends) is challenging, fun and a great workout! You can't really ask for more than that. For a bit of inspiration, take a look at the following video:

I hope you've enjoyed this hub and that you've found it useful. Comments and suggestions are welcome.