By: Reagan Rupard

On the Fierceformer, we ask a lot of our wrists; the three joints of the wrist and many joints of the hand support our body weight in any version of plank. Whether you’re dealing with chronic wrist pain in planks, are working out with a wrist injury, or are hoping to use some tips and tricks to protect your wrists in the long term, this month’s blog post is here to help!

First, let’s take a look at neutral alignment of the wrist. You hear the word “neutral” a lot during Fierce classes, but it’s not just about the spine. Neutral alignment of any joint is the position where we optimize our biomechanics so that joints are able to support the weight of our body without undue stress on the connective tissues that surround the joints. Contrary to what you may think, a straight line from your forearm to your knuckles is not the ideal position of the wrist. Instead, a little bit of wrist extension is needed to put our wrist in its happy place - the place where it can safely and effectively transfer the weight of our upper body and torso down through our bones without the pain-causing irritation to soft tissues.

There are two problems with the way we tend to do a plank:

our wrist is at end range extension
we are typically relaxed through our forearms giving our wrists no support from our forearm muscles.

Your wrist pain may not be limited to planks on the front platform: poor wrist position can also affect your ability to do core moves on the handlebars, some heavy leg exercises, and heavy upper body pushing exercises on the handlebars. The FierceFormer® is designed with wrist safety in mind. You have lots of options for wrist alignment to improve the endurance of this joint. A rule of thumb: get your knuckles below your wrist.

My tips for decreasing wrist pain and improving stability:

If you choose to do a flat palm in a plank with full wrist extension, grip the machine with your fingertips to activate your forearm flexors to support your wrist.
Try doing planks on your fist! This position puts your wrist in neutral alignment and helps transfer your weight down through your knuckles.
Use the machine design: drop fingers and knuckles down into the eyelets in the front platform or bring hands down to the platform bar or platform pegs to help you find a more neutral alignment.
In handlebar exercises, push weight through the meatiest part of the heel of your hand and allow knuckles to roll forward on the bar so that they are below your wrist.
In heavy side handlebar press, turn the fingers of your backhand toward the back of the room
In all planks, think about activating your core and puffing up in the space between your shoulder blades so that the muscles of your core, chest, and shoulder girdle are helping support your weight rather than pushing “dead weight” down onto your wrists.

Neutral wrist option on front platform (wrists below knuckles) can be translated to side of platform and platform eyelets

If you have current wrist pain or are looking to avoid developing wrist pain, try on these modifications. If you currently have a wrist injury, do moves on forearms or substitute for belly-up core moves as needed to get the most out of your 45 minutes. Always feel free to ask your coach about how you can support upper body discomfort so that you can spend your core block focusing on core!

💪🏾💪🏻pt corner: modifications for wrist pain 💪🏻💪🏾