Hello, I am new to martial arts and certainly new to martial arts planet. I recently joined a kuk sool won school and have been really enjoying it. However I have been working with the yellow belts as I am currently the only white belt, (really small school) and they have been practicing some moves on me. In particular is a series called [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3mhUpWrop4"]Sohn Mohk Soo.[/ame]. This series concentrates on wrist "punishment" and I was wondering if there was a way to help strengthen my wrists in order to reduce the pain and make the moves less effective on myself. We do do wrist pushups during our warm-ups (i currently just hold myself up because it hurts) so i was thinking that perhaps in time it would get better. and going beyond that, I guess would be all the joints and even pressure points, as i realize now how fragile the body really is. Thank you for your help in advance. wow! huge video! i thought it would just be a link..sorry about that. is there any way to get rid of that? or is that okay?
When you're doing compliant drills it's quite important that i) you let your partner know when it hurts by tapping and ii) that they release the lock before it gets to "punishment" levels of pain. No-one goes to training to get their joints hurt badly. Welcome to MAP, by the way!
Here you go - http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/md55.htm The video links are not a part of the original article, I added them for demonstration purposes. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ac_qmBjkFI"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ac_qmBjkFI[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krZ6pWGZ8xo"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krZ6pWGZ8xo[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lOFG0U_rlY"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lOFG0U_rlY[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly4eKusqxOY"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly4eKusqxOY[/ame]
As long as you're doing them compliantly to begin and work to progressively more resistance the muscles and tendons will adapt and strengthen sufficiently on their own. When I started aikido it took at least six months for my wrists to adapt to where the wrist locks/throws could be used full speed but they did adapt. I think if anything exercising them and then going to class will over-tax them and fool the process of strengthening them.
You have to know when to keep your arm soft and disconnected, and when to keep your arm to be connected. If you can twist the cane bundle 100 times daily, it will be helpful. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS37LsEUfMc"]cane bundle twist - YouTube[/ame]
Strengthening the wrists is all well and good, and I don't want to discourage it, but if you're trying to reduce the pain from wrist locking it's probably more important to (a) build wrist flexibility, and (b) learn to keep your muscles relaxed. Pretty much every aikido and hapkido guy learns wrist stretches like these very early on. They're a good place to start. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmwqBMLVsjE"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmwqBMLVsjE[/ame]
Well.....you COULD take a sharp pencil and jam it into your eye before class...that way you won't even notice the guy cranking on your wrist. On the other hand .... maybe...just maybe.... you need to find a pair and let the smug Yellow Belt who wants to show you just how bad they are that you aren't there to have them crank on you so they feel tough. Sure they'll give you some grief about being a wus, but 30 years from now you will be the Wus that DOESN'T have Osteoarthritis in their wrists. Take good care of yourself; you are the only YOU that you got, right? Best Wishes, Bruce
Wow thanks guys. I definitely like Hapuka's answer. lots of information. I'll have to see what I can do but i'll take everyone's advice into consideration. As for Bruce's advice, perhaps I gave the wrong impression but these guys aren't trying to hurt me, I call out pain, slap my knee, or do something and they release instantly and they take things slow, especially while learning something new as they aren't familiar with it and don't want to hurt me. They aren't bad guys and certainly not trying to feel tough. They are quite modest and very friendly. But it's rather that in an actual fight, there are all these points of weaknesses, and i'm sure there are many others i'm unaware of, and if you're only as strong as your weakest point, I might as well work on that rather than get taken advantage of. Where I live I really have no reason to fear being put in a fight, nor would I ever want to, but it's better prepared than sorry. I am definitely learning more in anatomy from martial arts than my anatomy course I took in college as now things are actually being applied to myself. Its very surprising all that I'm learning.
I used to have incredibly bad carpal tunnel and found that the Siu Nim Tao form from Ip Chun wing chun was great for strength. The chansigong exercises from Chen taiji were great for wrist flexibility and overall range of movement.
Squeezing a ball will strengthen your wrist muscles (and thus, protect the joints). I broke my scaphoid bone and thats one of the rehab techniques I had to do.
I started jujitsu shortly after i had the cast off of my arm following fracturing my wrist in 3 places, it has always been a weak point for me since (2 years and counting) some of these exercises should prove very useful for me! =D
