Painful wrists and hands!

[FaceLikeAPairOfTits]

I've been doing Adrienne's absolute beginner video, which is great, and generally within my capabilities. However, I'm heavy and I struggle with downward dog and cat stretch type poses as my wrists really hurt. My arms are fine, it's specifically my wrists and hands that are sore from holding up my weight.

Any tips? Or just wait til I get thin?

If your arms have not been used to this kind of exercise, or having weight loaded on to them, it will have come as a bit of a shock to the tendons/muscles in your wrists and hands - just as it would if you'd never run for a bus in your life, then suddenly decided to do a 30k marathon.

Let them rest and recover for a few days, then look for some strengthening exercises and do those first. THEN start the main exercises.

Thanks. Is there a particular set of wrist/hand exercises you'd recommend?

Just type 'wrist strengthening exercises' into your search engine, and you will have quite a choice to try.

Yes, I had a look, but some of the suggestions were things like planking and downward dog, which is what I have problems with in the first place! Will have another look.

I came back to yoga after breaking my arm which has left me with wrist tendon issues. When I was recovering I had some private sessions with a yoga teacher to help me work out what I could do and adjustments etc.

Sometimes if weight bearing on my hands is too much I would use my forearms instead (so dolphin pose arms) or what my teacher called “gorilla hands” so make a fist and weight bear on the flat of your knuckles so your wrists are straight rather than bent. Over time as I’ve strengthened (a little!) I don’t have to make these adjustments as often and it gets easier over time. I also have a stretchy/compression light wrist support which makes it more comfy. I believe there are combi grip gloves/wrist supports you can get designed especially for yoga.

Learning about proper weight bearing on your hands and alignment of arms is important too. Don’t lock your elbows out and bear weight into the joints - elbow creases should be facing towards each other not facing forward. This picture helped me work on proper hand positioning too www.yogabycandace.com/blog/2014/1/14/how-to-avoid-wrist-pain-in-yoga?rq=Wrist

The great thing about yoga is you can do it whatever shape or state of fitness you are. You do what you can and make adjustments if needed, and build on it step at a time.

I've been struggling with this too and I've had to abandon doing yoga every day because of horrible pain in my right wrist (strangely left is fine). Thanks for the tips Star jazmin I will try 'gorilla hands' tonight!

It takes a long time to build wrist strength so unfortunately there’s no cheats! It took me ages to get comfortable in downdog. My tips would be really spread your fingers so the weight is distributed equally through your hand and push back so you take the weight off your wrists, hips high, heels sinking down.

Good wrist stretchers are turning your hands around so your fingers face towards you and stretch the tendons, do this for 20 seconds.

Come out of downdog when you need yo, stretch your wrists and go back... don’t stay there in pain feeling frustrated...you can also go on your forearms into dolphin but I find this quite physically hard on the shoulders... overall just be patient it will come! X