Sprained Wrist Lifting Weights

[SoliDeoGloria]

Hey everyone! About 10 days ago, I sprained my wrist while doing some forearm curls at the gym. I have been working my arms 2-3 times a week for months, but did recently increase the weight and moved my wrist wrong during the curl. The pain isn't noticeable unless I am actively using the wrist in certain motions. 

The question I have is, how can I get back into some kind of arm routine for Biceps/Triceps/Shoulders while minimizing the impact on said wrist? I do already use gloves that include a wrist support band.

Or, do I just need to deal with it and take a few weeks off?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts/feedback!

God bless.

[WendyB]

You need to take time off until it heals or you will just make it worse.

Have you been to the DR? They might send you to a PT who will help you heal faster

[SoliDeoGloria]

I have not. Unfortunately, with a high deductible health plan and the ridiculous cost of a visit, I only go when it's absolutely needed. I pay 100% of all costs before my deductible.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Heybales · Accepted solution]

Now, are you doing isolation exercise for those muscles, which almost certainly use the forearms and wrists at end of lever?

Or are you doing good compound moves working bigger muscles that also happen to work those minor muscles too?

Because those usually don't sprain like that.

Every single pull with upper body is bicep workout, every single push is tricep workout.

And you are working out a bigger muscle at the same time.

If this is purely for vanity then understood, but you'll still hit them doing the bigger muscles.

Bench press, incline bench press, shoulder press - triceps.

Bent-over row, pull ups/lat pulldown, upright row - biceps.

You do a well laid out routine with all 6 of those - your biceps and triceps will feel like they got a workout - because they did.

And since those don't put the wrist at the end of a lever, the forearms and tendons stabilizing the wrist are not put under a huge strain.

Merely enough strength to keep it from tilting from neutral on the push stuff, confirm in neutral of course.

And the pull stuff is just grip, so while still forearm and those tendons, not the same as forearm curls.

You may be able to continue lifting. But ice after workout, warmup well prior.

[SoliDeoGloria]

Thanks for the thoughtful post!

My routine is typically bench press/bicep curls/forearm curls with free weights. Then I use the cable machine to do triceps, and cap it off with some machines (row, pulldown, fly's).

Like you suggested, I'll try sticking to just the compound exercises until I'm back up and running. Thanks for the tips!

[Meffus]

Realistically, it's the advice that every active person dreads to hear but you do need to take time off. Like the guys have already mentioned, you run the risk of causing more damage and it isn't worth it. You should probably consider a trip to the doc. A guy I work with injured his wrist a few months ago and it still hasn't healed. He decided to go to the doctors a few weeks ago and there are more complicated issues which they are now fixing for him. Hopefully you don't have any of those issues but it's better to be safe than sorry and it gets your back in the gym quicker with the correct medical advice. All the best for a speedy recovery! 

[slysam]

I agree time off from anything unnecessary that hurts your injured area. Physical therapists do often prescribe mild resistance to correct muscle imbalances and restore strength and range of motion to injured areas. I am not sure whether they do this right away though, when I went to one it was about 6 months after the initial injury (a shoulder injury). My PT told me not to do any exercise that caused it pain (high impact aerobic activity, heavy lifting, certain yoga poses, etc). He did prescribe daily mild resistance training and mobility work at that point. I was surprised that a few weeks after my last session, my pain was pretty much gone and my strength and range of motion had returned and I was cleared to ease back into the activities I had to stop. The PT did take about 3 months meeting once a week and doing the exercises every day. Given the pain I was in for the previous 6 months, I feel the deductible was some of the better money I've spent. But perhaps if my deductible was higher, I could have seen the therapist a little less often and just continued with the exercises (i.e. every two weeks instead of every week). He did slightly alter the plan every week and did some manipulation of my shoulder at each visit so I can't say for sure whether I would have responded the same to less frequent visits. I also once injured a wrist doing 100 push up challenge a little to zealously. I didn't seek treatment for that but was not able to do any weight bearing exercises on the wrist (without intense pain) for about 6 months. I iced it daily and just avoided exercises that hurt and it did eventually get better. I learned to modify some of the exercises I could no longer do by propping myself up in elbow plank on a pair of yoga blocks (I could do mountain climbers, plank jacks, downward dog, various plank based exercises that way). I could not do pushups (the activity that causedinjury) since I couldn' find a way to modify them without pain. Maybe you could still keep up with some strength work with weighted ankle weights (cuffed around your forearm if it doesn't hurt) and weighted vests. Some weight machines in a gym might be okay. But if not seeking treatment, I would suggest being extremely cautious and avoiding anything that causes pain. Sorry, working around my injury worked fine with my wrist injury, but that strategy didn't help at all with my shoulder injury. It may depend how serious the injury and what was the cause.