read this If you can’t do a pushup on your palms
What’s up movers!
If you’re reading this, I bet you are having a hard time doing pushups on the palm of your hand and instead resort to things like knuckle pushups, or bar pushups. Well where there is a will, there is a way.
There isn’t one main reason that your wrist loses mobility and therefore the ability to be ‘hand in hand’ with the floor, but primarily a bunch of little reasons. These can include general lack of mobility, previous injury, poor instruction, and a lack of knowledge.
It’s not that other forms are pushups are bad, but not having enough wrist mobility to achieve these positions can lead to other issues such as elbow pain/injury, a lack of shoulder mobility, issues with nerve mobility, and inhibiting you from performing other type of palm to floor exercise (ie: bear crawls, turkish get ups, burpees, tall planks). So, let’s start by fixing the fundamentals first.
Quick ways to relax the wrist/forearm to improve wrist range of motion include:
Rolling the top and bottom of your forearm with a lacrosse ball
Holding your hand out in front of you and pulling your fingers down with the opposite hand
Kneeling with your palms on the ground and fingers pointed toward your knees then rocking back toward your heels as tolerated
Above are some general stretches that can be beneficial to help release the tightness and allow the palm to lay flat on the ground. Next, we need to address strength within the hand and forearm.
Too often I see people doing pushups/planks/burpees/whatever and loading all of their weight through their wrist (you will see their thumbs and knuckles popping off the ground and a general lack of connection between the palm and the floor).
What we want to see is the full palm and fingers connected to the floor. When weight bearing on our hands, we want to think of pressing our knuckles and fingers into the floor. You will feel tension in the forearm and hand.
Progressing this new interaction between your hand and the floor is important. Over time your forearm and hand muscles have become fairly tight and loading them in this new way will be uncomfortable. Start with being on your hands and knees and practicing holding this new engagement. Next, lift your knees off the floor to place more weight in your hands. Finally, you can progress to a plank or pushup.
Now, if you have never thought about stretching your forearms and can’t imagine being able to lay your hand flat on the ground, you may need a professionals help. At Movementality, we pride ourselves on our manual therapy skills. Manual therapy techniques can include cupping, massage with an instrument, and other interesting tools to help your tissues want to expand and stretch into these new positions. It is important that a trained professional take a look at what you have going on, because “where you think it is, it ain’t” is an odd, but true saying.
Curious about how I can help you with your pushups and that aching wrist? Let’s chat. Go schedule a consultation call today!
