Wrist Stretches for Martial Arts

a chain is only as strong as its weakest link today I want to share with you some of my favorite wrist exercises for strength flexibility and overall wrist mobility and at the end of this video I'm going to show you my absolute favorite drills to Target the wrists so make sure that you stick with me all the way to the end if you find this information to be helpful hit the thumbs up button and be sure to subscribe to Marshall Flex our first wrist exercise is going to be targeting flexibility and it's actually kind of a flow combination I love this combination because it works passive stretching on the different angles of the wrist so we'll take the right hand and we're going to put it right here on the plexus pinky to the plexus left hand is going to grab the pad of the thumb and then the thumb of my left hand is going to go on the back of my right hand just like this okay and then we're just going to kind of turn it in just a little bit so we're going to be turning I mean we're gonna be pulling the pad of the thumb side on this exercise so from here the first stretch we're going to extend both of the arms forward as we are pulling that pad of the thumb and pressing the thumb on the back of the hand okay just go to extension two where you have a good stretch typically you want to hold a stretch for roughly about 15 seconds to move into the next stretch we're going to bring our hand back in Palm turns towards our chest and the thumb that's on the back and hand is going to Pivot we're going to grab the pinky side and then we're going to extend as we twist the Palm up now we're working the other side of the wrist again holding this stretch for roughly about 15 seconds then from here we're going to bring it in and we're going to press the fingers down to the elbows and squeeze the elbow and finger together okay if that we've got some good flexion stretch going on in the rest and then we're going to do some extension stretching here in a few minutes as well okay and hold each one of those for about 15 seconds and then you want to do three sets per side so let's go to work a set here on the left hand so left hand pinky goes to the plexus right hand is going to grab the pad of the thumb the thumb of my right hand goes on the back of my left hand we're going to give it a little bit of a twist and extend this out as we're twisting again just go into a nice stretch don't overdo it here typically hold for 15 seconds switching to the second exercise within this flow I'm going to bring the hand back in thumb pivots on the back of the hand grabbing the pinky side and as we extend twisting the Palm up to the sky hold for 15 seconds or so and then bring it back in elbow down and squeezing the elbow and finger together getting that flexion in the wrist alrighty let's move to our second set of exercises which is going to work on the extension in the wrists for our wrist extensions I'm just going to use the ground right now you could use the ground you can use a bench a table anything any kind of surface we're going to take a kneeling position place our hands on the ground fingers are facing forward keep the arms straight so elbows locked out and we're just going to lean over the hands until we get a stretch in the wrist hold that position just for about 15 seconds or so and then release you can do three sets of that we come back over you can also work some circles within this variation as well we just work a little bit of circles of dynamic stretching here and you really get to work out any kinks out of the wrist just make sure if you Circle one way that you go back and work the other way as well for a little bit more intensity in the wrist extension we can turn our fingers towards our knees and this is my favorite one as far as the wrist extension goes and then we just rock our hips back and you're going to get a much deeper stretch a little bit different kind of stretch here hold that for about 15 seconds or so release it and go again and of course when the fingers in the reverse position we could also work in some of those circles working out any of those little kinks and wrinkles out of our wrists the third set of wrist exercises which are my absolute favorite to do for my wrist conditioning Mobility strength flexibility targets everything I use a pair of sticks I have some collie sticks here you can use any type of sticks right this could be PVC pipes you cut down the sides an old broom handle that you cut down to size it could be two sticks pretty good ones you know sturdy ones that you could pick up out of a forest don't have to be anything fancy or special I'm just going to go ahead and grab the sticks just like this okay when we do these exercises I'm going to keep the hand closed I'm not going to let my hand open but I'm also not death gripping it I'm not giving everything I've got into the grip just holding the stick enough to keep it secured in the hand when we hold the sticks we're going to keep the elbows close to the body and the hands are going to be about shoulder height so you're going to see that my wrist my elbow and my shoulder form a triangle from there we're going to rotate the hands forward and the thing I like about this exercise with the sticks is that we get a full rotation a full range of motion in the wrist because we have that momentum of the sticks that are helping just bring the wrist over through rotation we're still working some of that grip strength because I'm holding on to the stick I'm not releasing the stick like this it's not baton twirling okay we are holding on to the stick and keeping that hand closed now again not a death grip yep and we just rotate this forward now I like getting at least 50 rotations in you can go up to a hundred if you want to but we just get it forward if you find that your sticks are sliding down your hands you just tuck them underneath grab the stick grab the stick and just give it a go again if they're sliding then that's a lot of times that's just due to needing to improve the grip strength and in the beginning you don't have to worry about going fast but if you want to build a little bit more strength endurance muscular endurance then you can speed up your rotations okay another exercise I like to do with the collie sticks here is I do one rotation forward one rotation back yes it's gonna work a little bit in the shoulders as well but now we have that wrist rotation going back in the other way you could work in all of the reverse motions just like this like we did on the forward one but we can also work forward and back changing directions [Music] boom remember that the stick is always rotating to the outside of the forms hey we're not rotating anything on the inside here because we don't want you to pop your own chin so outside and outside forward and back okay just like this when you're doing the forward and back rotation you're going to stop the tips of the stick right online with your eyes and then force them back so you almost want this little snap out there and they're actually uh these are actually strikes within Filipino martial arts right there so that just covers the core of my favorite wrist Mobility strength flexibility drills that I like to do make sure you put these in your practice they're really going to help within your Martial Arts because us martial artists we don't just need you know a strong strong arms chest and back and legs we need strong grip and we need strong wrists and forms as well and these exercises are going to help you out with that once again if you find this video to be helpful make sure to hit the Thumbs Up Button let me know what is the weakest link in your body that needs to get stronger needs to get more flexible needs to get more mobile be sure to subscribe here to Marshall flex and if you want a pair of Collie sticks to work out with I got a link down below just click that link go order yourself a pair of sticks and I'll see you back here next time thank you foreign