Mastering Wrist Strength: The Ultimate Guide to Enhancing Your Calisthenics Performance

Mar 5, 2024
4 min read

Introduction

The wrists and hands are our gateway to the world. To interact, to manipulate, to hold on to reality.

Okay, this is a little deep. But you get the point, training effectively without using the hands and loading the wrists is pretty much impossible.

Info

You can train without loading the wrists and I needed to develop protocols to train full body without any wrist load. So if you are currently dealing with wrist issues, reach out.

In the Core Training in Calisthenics Article we dove into the necessity of core training.

Now in this article we will ask the same question regarding wrist prep, forearm training and our hands.

Is it necessary or can we skip it because the wrists usually get enough training from just pulling and pushing.

Let’s dive in.

Importance

At first let’s take a look at important aspects and benefits from wrist training.

Preparation

Training the wrist isolated is a great way to prepare the hands, forearms and wrists not just for the exact load we are dealing with right now in a push-up.

We are also able to increase our capabilities to prepare for future load, to be able to resist unexpected impacts and we can even gain new abilities and ranges.

Grip

For any pulling and even some pushing and leg training our grip is required to transfer any force our arms and shoulders produce into the bar or rings.

If you have ever trained with wrist straps you will notice that you can deadlift more or hang longer when your grip is not your limiting factor.

Forearm training allows you to get rid of your strap dependency.

Handbalance

To effectively train handstands and other handbalancing variations the wrist and forearm strength are a major limitation.

In a great handstand we want 90% of our balance to purely come from the wrists so that all other joints are free to move independently from your balance.

This is a necessity to effectively perform press handstands, handstand push-ups and hollowback handstands.

Only if you can apply enough force through your fingers and palm you have a good area of support to balance on. A lack of forearm strength means less area to balance on, requiring quicker and more precise actions when rebalancing.

And finally the most helpful point: a handstand will always require lot’s of training and practice.

Without some resilient and enduring wrists you will have to stop your handstand training early just because your wrists give up.

This is a common issue I saw in many of my calisthenics, acrobatics and handstand classes.

False Grip

The false grip - essentially over-gripping the bar or rings is a super important aspect of ring work and muscle ups. Yes there are so called no-false grip muscle ups possible. And explosive muscle ups don’t necessarily require the false grip. But it helps tremendously.

The false grip allows a transition from hang to support without changing your hand position.

Check out the False Grip Prep.

Resilience

Last but not least many elbow and even shoulder issues can stem from a lack of strength or mobility in the forearm.

If the forearm is not mobile enough in pronation, the shoulder need to constantly stay in a slight internal rotation to compensate for that.

This constantly internally rotated position can cause shoulder issues, medial epicondylitis and more problems.

→ We are going to dive deeper into the mechanics of this phenomenon in the biomechanics course.

Excursus: Wrist Ability effecting Shoulder Issues

Wrist vs Core Training?

Now while the wrists seem to be in a similar situation to the core, there is 1 fundamental difference:

The core recovers much better usually and a lack of shoulder ability will just cause more core involvement, it does not work like this for the wrists.

Wrist issues usually take weeks to month to recover, the wrists can not simply compensate for the shoulders, instead they usually get overloaded very quickly.

Forms

Now let’s take a final look at the 3 most common forms of wrist training.

Airborne

Airborne wrist prep means we are just holding the arms mid air. It involves all movements where we do not hang or support nor hold on to something. Our wrists are free to move and the training effect usually comes from

isometric resistance of antagonistic muscles
working into end ranges
going for high volume

This type is perfect for rehabilitation, warming up and recovery midst sets.

It is super accessible, but not very measurable and does not scale to high strength levels.

Supporting (Quadrupedal)

Quadrupedal Wrist work includes all kinds of wrist work in various supporting positions.

It’s usually regressed by training against a wall or in a kneeling front support.

Later we can progress to plank variations or even on arm work.

This type has the biggest relevance for pushing work and for handstand preparation.

Hanging

Hanging wrist prep includes all forms of hanging, from regular hanging to regressions like in an Australian (row) hang or even one arm hanging as advanced progression.

Weighted

Weighted wrist training is a huge world, but for simplicity reasons we will keep it short.

It could be considered as a variation of Airborne Wrist Prep.

Conclusion

I strongly believe wrist training is essential and necessary for 4 reasons.

Involvement: The wrists, hands and forearms are involved in 99% of all Upper Body Calisthenics Movements.
Shoulder Health: While wrist and elbow issues are very common, deficiencies in the forearms can even result in shoulder issues.
Handbalance: A handstand can be learned 2-5x faster with proper wrist and forearm ability.
False Grip for Ring Work: Muscles Ups and advanced ring work requires a solid false grip, I’ve had students who needed to stall their ring work for more than 3 month due to the false grip lacking behind.

Train your wrists. Regularly. Carefully. Intentionally. Progressively.