Avoiding Wrist Injuries
January 7, 2010
The wrist is a part of the body that allows us much flexibility to lift and manipulate objects. The wrist is made up of ten bones in total, which includes bones of the forearm and the carpal bones.
All these bones are bound together by wrist ligaments. Wrist sprains happen when these ligaments are stressed beyond their capable capacity. When the ligaments are stressed too much they generally tear. This tear may vary from a partial tear to a full tear. The more the tear, the more the pain.
Wrist pain can also happen due to fractures in the bones of the wrist.
How do wrist injuries happen?
- There are umpteen ways how a wrist injury can happen. You might be bicycling and suddenly may trip and fall on your wrist, and in the process hurt your wrist. You might also get wrist injuries while playing contact sports like rugby, boxing, karate, and even basketball.
- Overusing your wrist can also cause wrist injury. This is called repetitive stress injury. Its symptoms are generally inflammation around the wrist.
How to look after your wrists?
- If you are playing contact sports like rugby, football etc, try to avoid falling in positions that put pressure on only one part of the body, which includes the wrist. Learn the art of falling down without getting injured! You might have noticed professional footballers or rugby athletes falling down or crashing down, but still get up and run! This is nothing but falling down in a way that distributes the impact of the fall evenly across the body.
- Do a lot of wrist exercises that strengthen the muscles around your wrist. Take a lightweight rod and do wrist slow wrist circles both in clockwise and anticlockwise direction.
- Be careful with your wrist positions while lifting weights in the gym. See if your gym provides barbells with clasp-area that suits the wrist’s natural position.
- If you have repetitive stress injury, then take regular breaks during work. If you are using a keyboard to type, then try typing using a very loose hand. Don’t keep your hand taut when typing.
- Once your wrist is injured, don’t oversee it and continue exercising. Take 3-4 weeks of complete rest to get your wrist fully recuperated.
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