grip training
 

My wrists bother me on and off (mild tendonitis?). Once or twice I've been spinning heavy at a workshop and it just aggravates my wrists. When I can remember to do them, the spiralling/wrist tension exercises seem to help. I'm thinking about adding grip training to my strength conditioning since I suspect my relatively weak hand and forearm strength is part of the problem.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Will doing stuff like reverse grip wrist curls, rope pull ups, and plate pinching help out my wrists? Also, will it help/hinder my developing wrist power?

I don't knoiw if this will be helpful but in reguard to the heavy spinning hurting your wrists, make sure you relax as much as possable. You should be able to spin with little to no wrist tension. There shouldn't be much strain on them at all.

Then again, I'm still new at this so I could be wrong. :confused:

There are so many ways to strengthen grip and wrists but one of the best which requires no equipment and can be done while spiraling and wrapping is to wring out a wet towel. washcloth, t-shirt etc. Just remember to wring out in both directions since hands are alternating.

Maybe my skill isn't high enough, but I don't think you can spin heavy without maintaining some tension at the wrists. As I understand it, flexion or extension at the wrists is part of generating the concave/convex shape and allowing expansion at the point of contact.

I've read about people wringing towels to train grip strength. Is it any better than other equipment like ropes, barbells, dumbbells, wrist rollers, etc? I'm already at the gym anyhow (free membership is a perk of teaching). I thought I'd just add 5-10 minutes of grip training at the end of my regular workout.

The advantage of wringing a towel is that it is not a fixed position exercise like using a roller bar or barbell. Dumbbells allow a greater degree of movement but wringing a flexible object like a towel allows the greatest range of natural movement of the wrist. Additionally, it's very easy to vary/increase the thickness of the towel by folding it over itself which adds another aspect and degree of difficulty to training.

Johnny, the problem is that you already have strong wrists. I asked one of the "good" PTs that I know about the problem, and while you're not going to like the response, i'll go ahead and give it to you.

She said take one full week off of all weight stuff (and jumping rope) and spinning/sticky hands. take some glucosamine, then start back up slowly. if the wrist hurts, back off. There is a tendon that can get swollen, and no amount of training is going to fix it. It needs time to relax...

free advice, so you know what its worth.

Hi Johnny,

More free advice:
You might also have a ganglion cyst in the wrist, which is quite common. If you have a ganglion, you might notice sudden pain and weakness when the wrist is at a sharp angle. Sometimes ganglions disappear on their own, sometime therapy helps.

Here's what others have written about ganglion wrist pain:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...ge=true&cat=50
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/scrip...33&pf=3&page=1

Hope you find out whatever is causing the pain!

Peter

I'm coming from 7 years of good taiji training, though I'm still a noob in ILC.
If we were in the same area I would just show you. I can show you how to do it in 5 minutes but trying to explain it online... well that's another thing entirely.

Try this... Instead of thinking of pushing against your opponent just maintain your space. Don't let your structure collapse, If both people are occupying the same space then there will be pressure between them. If you are pushing against your opponent then you will have tension all over. Hard to explain, easy to feel. :(

If we ever meet I'll show you. Don't think push against, just be and spin.

johnny,

i go through fits and starts of wrist pain myself. so far the best thing i've found as a short term, get you through the flair up right now kind of thing is to wrap the hand and wrist in a boxing hand wrap. it supports the hand and wrist better than ANY wrist wrap and gives the wrist a chance to rest while you can still work and or train.

also, try doing ankle circles on the opposite ankle. (i.e. if the left wrist hurts do the circles on the right ankle.) the fascia in the body runs in spirals, so you work the opposing joint to rehab the hurting joint.

stand nice and tall with a long spine and try to make as slow and precise a circle as possible, 3x clock and 3x counter-clockwise, 3x day.

for grip training, try to make or use thick bars and captains o' crush if you can drop a few bucks. thick handled KB's, a la, dragondoor style and wet towels are all good grip training.

Sifu likes the windlass.

I know what wet towels are, but what's a windlass?

Peter

Windlass
http://www.shouyuliang.com/index.php...267&Itemid=224

(at least I think that's what Ashe is talking about - correct me if i'm wrong)

the person I talked to about johnny's wrist suggested this and swimming after he's given his tendons a chance to cool down... i like the windlass but I like using a wrist diameter sized pvc - a little larger than the one pictured.

A windlass is a manual crank winch/pulley apparatus for lifting heavy objects used on boats. Often when clips are shown of world cup yacht racing there is usually a focus on a crew member furiously cranking away. Don't know though if that is what Sifu has in mind.

yup, that's what i was talking about. the pvc is essentially what i meant by "thick bar" training too.

I think most people would know that as a roller bar.

Thanks for the tips everyone. I'm taking a week or two off any exercises that involve my grip/wrists. Now that I think about it, my wrists feel a lot like they did just before I got tendonitis from overtraining the rings a year or so ago.

I'll have to try the ankle circles too. It seems weird that the ankles could have an effect on something as distant as the wrists. That's an interconnection that doesn't make intuitive sense to me yet.

it comes out of the z-health system which shares a lot in common and draws some what upon the works of guys like tom meyers. lot's of the elite dragon door guys like kenneth jay are getting z-health certified.

Think about the connection in terms of the gait cycle. when you step forward with the left foot (ankle) the right arm (wrist) also swings forward. Z-health (and a lot of other similar somatic modalities) uses the gait cycle, or how you walk, to try to understand the cause of whatever dysfunction is then causing the pain that you're feeling.

Ashe, are you doing the Z-health thing? What do you think of it? As I understand it it is based pretty heavily on Scott Sonnon's (and the Russian's) zdorovye - hence the name. I'm fascinated by this kind of work (I consider it to be a form of somatics - maybe I'm wrong) but dislike some aspects of the way it is presented. If you're interested, this book: http://www.amazon.com/Clinical-Neuro.../dp/0750654562 is provides some of the evidence base for somatic movement and treatment and might be worthwhile.

Another place worth looking at is somasimple, which is a decent forum for this type of discussion. They had an interesting discussion about z-health that hit on my one real problem with it here: http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4088

word.

i've been working with a few of the z-health drills as the beginning of my warm-ups, to get some neurological activation going on before moving on to mobility drills, foam rolling etc. i was looking into the possibility of getting the r-phase cert, but i'm seriously considering pursuing the ck-fms instead. i think the z-health stuff is predicated more on the facial slings, a la, tom meyers work. i think they work well as the beginning of your warm up, but so far they don't seem like the panacea that they were billed as.

You'll definitely have to let us know how the ck-fms thing goes if you decide to do it. I really like Gray Cook, I think the way he orders his training makes it both accessible to non-fit or highly dysfunctional people but also useful for athletes...

very cool!