When I started my Pilates journey, I was not strong. I have never been known to be strong. In fact, it had been kind of a joke how weak I was. My biceps, when tensed, are lucky if they look flat rather than concave. I would love to pretend that a year of Pilates has magically made me a strong woman; but it has not. However, I am a lot stronger than I was and for that I am grateful. For example, I can now hold a front support!

This movement is often touted as an ab exercise, which it is, but I have always found the weakness in my shoulders and my wrists to be the weakest link in the chain that is my body. Continuous Pilates over the year has improved my shoulder strength. But wrist strength… Well that is another issue.

Conventional advice for wrist pain in Pilates is to just do more Pilates. Little and often, to slowly build up the strength, as the pain comes from weakness (this is similar for hip flexor pain too). This was not enough for me. I was admittedly embarassed by how weak my wrists were, especially during my teacher training days.

So naturally, as any self respecting millenial, I turned to Google.

And after confirming that the pain was due to weakness, I discovered that the wrist pain can also come from the fact that our wrists are not used to being in that position. Which makes sense, but it had not been something I had thought about before I had read it. My wrists are straight as I type this. No wonder they feel off when I bend them 90 degrees!

As part of my Googling, I found the most wonderful video of exercises to strengthen my wrists. A short five minute routine that required a set of small dumbbells. Now typically in these kind of blogs, I would now start trying to sell you this magic routine for some exorberant price and claim it as my own. But I am not going to do that. Instead, I am going to link it below and thank the creator for sharing.

The routine takes you through some basic stengthing exercises with 1kg weights, though I am sure you could use a filled water bottle or tins of food as an alternative. Then nerve stretches. Nerve stretches feel weird. Unpleasant in a way that is not technically painful, but you still do not want to hold it. These nerve stretches really help with convincing your wrists that being bent back 90 degrees is an okay position to be in.

I was genuinely impressed how quickly these exercises helped me with my wrist pain. Shoud I have been? Probably not. I have been to physiotherapists often enough that I know how quickly some exercises can improve a physical condiiton. Yet still, I was suprised. I completed them a couple of times a week at the gym, when I arrived a bit early for a class. I then progressed this to buying a pair of 1kg dumbbells to take with me to work so I could do the exercises at lunchtime. Did this look weird? Yes, probably. Did it help? Yes, definitely.

At the moment, my online classes only require a mat. But at some point, I would like to progress to giving classes where I can incorporate this routine, so that everyone can benefit from this. Because the only reason you should be failing at a plank or front support is ab strength, not wrist pain.

Let me know if this video helps with your wrist pain!