How to Strengthen Your Wrists (And Stretch Them, Too)

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Most of us use our wrists and hands near constantly—for texting, scrolling, lifting, driving, practicing yoga, and almost everything else. Yet it’s only when our wrists become achy and make all those things challenging that we learn how to strengthen the wrists and bother to stretch them.

Turns out, that’s a mistake.

Although they comprise a tiny area relative to our entire bodies, our wrists deliver an outsize performance. They connect our forearm bones to the carpal bones of our hands, supported by tendons that are surrounded by a band of thickened fascia. As that crucial connector, the wrists contain a complex array of tendons that extend from forearm muscles and allow for dexterity and diverse movements including flexion, extension, adduction, and abduction. The wrists are also home to numerous nerves as well as the dorsal and palmar intercarpal ligaments, which serve to stabilize the joint and allow for the free movement we count on to accomplish everyday tasks.

Despite all of the major functionality this part of our body gives us, there’s often a lack of emphasis on learning how to strengthen wrists or stretch them for preventative care, which can lead to problems. Some of the most prevalent overuse issues are strains, sprains, carpal tunnel syndrome (a pinched nerve), and tendinitis (inflamed tissue). Each of these can mean irritation, pain, and loss of mobility.

The stretches and strengthening exercises can be performed when you first wake up in the morning, when you have a break in your day, or before you begin a yoga class. Many of the simpler ones can even be done at your desk in between meetings. The important thing is to find a way to slip them into your routine.

How to Stretch and Strengthen Your Wrists

Less is more when it comes to trying new things with the somewhat delicate area of your wrists. Start with the slightest of stretches and just a few repetitions. If you experience wrist pain, whether in everyday life or during your yoga practice, consult with your physician prior to trying any of these exercises.

1. Alter Your Hand Position in Tabletop

“All fours is a great place to stretch the wrists, which is also essential for wrist strength,” says Soozie Kinstler, a Denver-based yoga teacher, massage therapist, and founder of Jaiyoflow Yoga. When you’re in Tabletop or perhaps practicing Cat and Cow, you’ll commonly hear teachers recommend positioning your hands in different ways than usual to stretch your wrists. Start by angling your fingers slightly away from the center of the mat, rather than straight ahead, and see how that feels. For a more intense stretch, continue to angle your fingers further outward or pull a 180 and turn them toward your knees.

You can modulate the amount of stretch not just by the angle but by leaning back slightly to bring more of your weight into your legs.

2. Serratus Push-Ups

A strong core and stable shoulders can help ease strain on the wrists during certain weight-bearing yoga poses. Serratus or scapular pushups are a good way to build both core strength and shoulder stability by strengthening the serratus anterior, a scapular stabilizer. Come to your hands and knees and then push through your hands and alternate drawing your shoulder blades toward and away from your spine. Vary the movement ever so slightly up and down, in and out around the spine. You can also practice this while standing arms-length away from a wall and leaning into it to avoid placing pressure on your knees.

3. Make Fists

Kristin Leal, a London-based yoga teacher and author of MetaAnatomy, recommends reaching your arms in front of you as you sit or stand and making fists. “Hold them tight and visually see or kinesthetically feel that engagement in the forearms,” Leal says.

Strengthening exercises such as making fists aren’t just about building strength. It’s also about building muscle memory for those who practice arm balances and inversions. “Think about what’s possible with that stability so that when you begin to turn weight upside down on your arms and hands, you can look for that same hugging of the muscles onto the forearms.” This recruits supportive muscles that can minimize the pressure placed on your wrists.

4. Massage

Any massage for the forearms will help release your hard-working flexor and extensor muscles that enable you to bend and straighten your wrists. That includes self-massage, which you can do by using your opposite elbow as a tool, advises Richelle Ricard, a Portland-based yoga teacher and author of The Yoga Engineer’s Manual. Try lightly moving your opposite elbow back and forth along the length of your forearm, applying pressure to both the top and underside.

5. Squeeze

Ricard also suggests practicing hand-grip exercises by “squeezing” an imaginary baseball, then softball, then volleyball, then basketball. “As the ‘ball’ gets bigger and bigger, imagine you could use your palm to do the gripping instead of just the fingers,” she says. This visualization, encouraging centering on the palms, allows for a wider stretch that encompasses the whole hand.

6. Try “Cat-Pawing”

Another exercise Ricard recommends is ”cat-pawing” with your hands on the floor. Think of your cat “making biscuits” by kneading a blanket with their paws. To imitate this, you want to stretch your fingers away from your palms while focusing on using a lighter touch and repetitive motion. This simple move is a particularly good one to do on your mat right before yoga class. After completing this exercise, Ricard adds, interlace your fingers in front of you, flip your palms to face away from you, and stretch your wrists.

7. Practice Prayer Hands

If you practice yoga, you already know this stretch that targets the wrist flexors. Bring your hands together at your chest with your fingers pointing toward the ceiling. Press your palms against one another and slowly lower your hands until your forearms are parallel to the floor. Stay here for at least 15 seconds. Release or keep your palms together as you slowly turn your fingers away from you and pause another 15 seconds. You can practice the same exercise behind your back.

8. Water Bottle Bicep Curls

Challenging your wrists’ current range of motion can strengthen the wrist extensors, says Leal. Start by holding a water bottle as if you were going to drink from it but hold your arm still and move only your wrist. “You can move your wrist in any direction, but just having that very gentle weight and small repetitions can build up,” says Leal. She suggests you can also try it with a can of soup or even a small dumbbell in all different directions.

9. Resist

A simple strengthening exercise suggested by the Arthritis Foundation is to bring one forearm in front of you, palm facing up or down, and then use your other hand to hold your palm in place as you try to bend your wrist. Try moving it up, down, and side to side. The resistance created is an isometric strengthening exercise that you can repeat several times a day.

10. Practice Hand Movements

Even the simplest of wrist curls and rotations can improve your range of motion. So whether you’re thinking about what wrist movement you’re doing or simply circling your wrists at your desk in between Zoom meetings, you’ll derive benefits. An additional—and easy—stretch to play around with is to touch the tips of your thumb and four fingers together like a little beak. Or curl your thumbs in toward your palm and then wrap your four fingers tightly over them. Be creative, but also, remember to be gentle and take any new wrist movement slowly and with care.