Tendinitis of any kind, can really hinder your training and can be a depressing injury to acquire but I am just going to be honest here and straight forward, that if you are serious about weight lifting or any type of physical activity, you will experience some form of tendinitis.
Just as a quick reminder, if you didn’t know already, tendinitis is simply an inflammation of the tendon. This can be acquired from performing any type of exercise or any other activity due to the overuse of the tendon, in whatever activity it may be. So if you do bicep curls and are always trying to progressively overload your muscles, as it’s the only way to gain muscle mass, then you will either experience bicep tendinitis, or you could acquire wrist tendinitis. Either way, it’s an injury that’s annoying and comes with the territory. Not much people talk about the pains that are associated with weight lifting but I think a responsible individual would want to know EVERYTHING about bodybuilding or weight lifting, so that if it does happen even after performing warm ups and stretches to prevent these types of injuries, you can at least treat it.
So aside from the icing or heating, that I have previously spoken off in the Joint Pain article, you can perform these four exercises:
1) Wrist Roll
This is exercise is performed by extending your hand in front of you with your palm facing down, and roll your wrist in a circle in a controlled motion towards one side and then reverse the rotation. Do this with both hands.
2) Finger Stretches
Extend your arm in front of you with your palm facing down. Grab one of your fingers with your other hand and extend the finger towards your elbow, until you feel the stretch. Obviously we’re not looking to break our fingers here. So just stretch it as far as you possibly can and repeat with your other four fingers.
3) Wrist Flex
I was actually able to find a you tube video that demonstrates this pretty well. This is to be done 10 times.
4) Tendon Gliding
This one actually feels pretty good. I will admit, it helps immensely with my wrist tendinitis. I also found a video to demonstrate this, so you can follow what you see, rather than figure out what I am trying to say 🙂
These exercises are to be performed at least twice for the day. I do it as often as the feeling comes with the pain in my wrists from typing and also from training. When I get up the next day, I have no pain at all. I have started using wrist wraps to help, and they have been doing just that, helping immensely. I currently do not feel any stiffness or pain in my wrists, that I do not even have to do these exercises but continue because it’s a very good way of strengthening your wrists and help with lubrication (the tendon gliding exercise helps with this). You can also get yourself some grippers, to help strengthen your wrists, which is another suggestion when treating wrist tendinitis or a tennis ball will suffice. Just squeeze it as hard as you can and hold for a bit. As your strength increases, you will be able to squeeze the ball even tighter.
I hope these four suggestions can bring some relief and comfort to your wrist tendinitis, especially if you are one who don’t care to use gloves or wraps, unless the lifts become extremely heavy.
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