Bicep Curls: How to Reduce Wrist Pain
By Jason
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Have you ever done a heavy set of bicep curls and noticed a nagging pain in your wrists when you’re done? Maybe you’ve even felt enough pain that you’ve had to cut your workout short.
This pain can affect some people more than others. The good news is that just like anything else, your bones and cartilage can grow stronger with time as they respond to resistance.
Causes
You may have noticed that doing bicep curls using a straight bar or dumbbells will especially give you some wrist pain. We’ll get to how to reduce this pain in just a moment, but first, let’s understand what’s leading to it.
There are two major factors of bicep curls that affect your wrist pain; the first is the angle of your wrists, and the second factor is the torque force on your wrists.
1. Your wrist angle – In order to help you understand why the angle of your wrist is part of the equation, I’d like you to think about one of those karate guys who breaks a stack of wooden boards or bricks. Think about what you would do if you were trying to break a few boards with your bare hands. How would you stack the boards to make them break most easily?
Well, obviously, you would lay to boards down flat, one on top of the other, and then you would strike the flat face of the board. Now, imagine what would happen if you stood the boards on their sides and then you hit the side of them. Chances are, you would have a broken hand and no broken boards.
I hope this is making sense to you.
Your wrists are similar to the board. When the force is placed on the flat inside of your wrists (as it is in a straight bar bicep curl with the palms facing up), your wrist feels more pain. When you point your thumbs towards the ceiling, as you would with hammer curls, the force is placed on the stronger side of your wrist.
That is why the EZ curl bar was invented, to reduce the pain on your wrists. It places your wrists at an angle where the palms aren’t facing straight up. Unfortunately, although the straight bar causes more wrist pain, the straight bar is also better for your biceps.
If you are feeling wrist pain, use the EZ curl bar for a while and ease up on the weight a little bit. Once your wrists have healed up, we’ll use a simple hack to make the straight bar easier on your wrists.
2. Reduce the torque on your wrists – Once you’re ready to begin using the straight bar or dumbbells again, you can use this simple tweak to your form to reduce the torque on your wrists.
It’s pretty simple, really. All you have to do is curl your wrists so that the bar you are holding in your hand is nearly directly over your wrist.
This works because your wrist is basically a hinge. More force is placed on that hinge when it has to move a weight that is further away from the hinge. Think of the concept of leverage… if you want to lift up a heavy rock using your body weight and a long stick, the longer the stick is, the more leverage you will have to help you lift the rock up.
Or maybe think of when you’re working on a car to loosen a tight bolt. If you use a very short wrench, you might have a pretty tough time getting that bolt loose. But, if you use a very long wrench, you’ll have a much easier time getting the bolt loose because you have more force.
Ok, now that you understand that placing the force (weight) further away increases the torque, you can understand why I am telling you to curl your wrists toward you. By curling your wrists in, you bring the weight closer to the wrist and the decreased force of the weight in your hands results in less torque or pressure on your wrists.
For me, I have approximately 3 inches if distance between my wrist and the weight in my hands. When I curl my wrists in, that distance becomes a little less than an inch, resulting in significantly less torque on my wrists.
As an added benefit, this flexes your forearms more, keeps them tight throughout the movement, and gives them a bit better workout.
But doesn’t all of this make curls easier?
Yes, curling your wrists in makes your curls easier to do. It reduces the force on your wrists, and it also shortens the overall length of your arm, making the curls easier on your muscles.
This is pretty easy to compensate for, though. Just add a little more weight to your exercise.
Now, since I can read your mind, I know what you are probably thinking. If I curl my wrists in to reduce the pressure on my wrists, then adding more weight will just put the pressure back on my wrists… right?
Well, the answer is yes, it does put some pressure back on your wrists, but not as much as you had to begin with. You see, you are able to lift more weight because your entire arm has been shortened maybe 10-15% (or somewhere close to that). So this will make the curls easier.
But the distance to your wrists has been reduced maybe somewhere around 60-70%. That means that your wrists are getting proportionately a much greater reduction in torque pressure than your arm as a whole gets.
Conclusion: Your wrists, just like anything else can become stronger through resistance training. The wrists need rest to heal, and using these small changes to your form can make a big difference in the amount of wrist pain that you’re feeling.
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