How can I avoid wrist pain after punching a heavy bag?

Stepping into this sport may be easy but practicing to be the best is not that simple. Punching the heavy bag may bring up some problems such as wrist pain and wrist injuries which can be paramount for a boxer until he recovers from the pain. Most of the time when you are practicing, you don’t know what is possible to happen. You throw a punch and suddenly you will experience that sharp killing pain throughout your wrists. There are several reasons for this problem such as not wearing gloves, not wearing hand wraps, using the wrong technique, no proper rest or it may be because you are not warming up properly before starting your practice. In other cases, some boxers are just prone to wrist injuries and pain and if you are one of them, you might need to define your fighting style according to your own weaknesses as well as your strengths.

The first and foremost thing that you can do for wrist pain is to avoid any chance of getting one because prevention is better than recovering. You should avoid the injury and take the notice seriously if you happen to get some wrist injury, you must know that it is very critical that you treat it properly as it may lead to other wrist problems.

There are some solutions for wrist pain which are discussed as below.

Warm-Up Properly

Before starting your practice, it is very important for you to warm yourself up properly, because we all know injuries are more prone to happen when not warmed up. Therefore, you should not have cold muscles while starting your practice workout. In order to warm up enough, we find that dynamic stretching is the best exercise before a workout.

The Heavy Bag

The right use of the right heavy bag is important for your success. With reference to your heavy bag, you must know that punching a bag with no or very little movements is a perfect recipe for getting your wrist injured. In contrast, using a high-quality heavy bag reduces the chances of wrist damage significantly. Therefore, you must choose your bag carefully with the weight best suited for you.

Even the good quality of the bag doesn’t work if you go crazy with punching your bag. In a sport like boxing, when you practice power and speed you must also practice patience. If you are a newbie and alive with passion, you must calm yourself as your body muscles and joints need time to adjust to the bag and the workout.Therefore, it is recommended that you should not practice it daily.

Hand Wraps and Gloves

You may find hand wraps unnecessary during your routine workout but a boxer can never get to his form without hand wraps. Hand wraps are vital for your wrists because they help to align your forearm, wrist, and fist in the right position. So if you ever think to try punching your heavy bag without the wraps, you are just being vulnerable to a devastating wrist injury. The traditional cotton; PW stretch type pf hand wraps are the best-recommended wraps and if you don’t know how to wrap your hands perfectly, you must learn it before you practice. You can ask around your gym or look online for the best ways.

As far as Gloves are concerned, they are essential to boxing. You must be able to know the right one for you. Generally, high quality pair of 12/14 oz is recommended. However, it will also depend on your own size. You can look up which pair will suit you the best.

The Right Technique

More than power and strength boxing is about techniques; techniques to attack and techniques to defend. Being new to the sport you must know that there is so much to know about how to align your knuckles, wrist, hand and forearm perfectly to develop an effective boxing style. A common misconception among the new beginners is that in order to deliver an effective punch you need to push the bag as hard as you can utilizing the body weight and shoulders. However, this is not the reality which can be seen clearly if one notices the Great Mike Tyson while working with a heavy bag. He punches and as soon as it delivers the maximum of its impact the punch travels back to the way it came in on as fast as it can. This speedy movement is the real key to unlock the knockout power. Implying the right technique does not only give you power but it also improves your speed and balance.

Resting Routine

We all believe in hard work but when you are professional in a sport you need to know how to work smart. Having said that, I’d like to mention that boxing is not only about putting on gloves and punching the pads or heavy bags. There are many more exercises that you might need to develop and strengthen your muscles and bones.

You must need to do hard work but you also need enough rest to maintain your health and the best of your body shape. Otherwise, you might get injured out of exhaustion. It is recommended to take a day off or two during your routine practices. So your body is able to recover enough.

Strengthening the Wrists

As a matter of fact, wrists do not have lots of muscle mass rather they are just bones and tendons. Therefore, using perfect techniques and right equipment in your routine practice for boxing seems sufficient to strengthen your wrists. Some of the resistance techniques can be used for the purpose. Such as:

Farmer’s walk: a walk holding dumbbells in both the hands.

Hand grip strengthener: help in building the muscles in wrist and forearms. These are cheap and affordable.

Wrist extensions and barbell wrist curls: is an extension of your hands to your knees and holding a weight in each of your hands you extend your wrist up and down.

Lateral wrist extension: is about extending the sides of your arms on your thigh and bend the wrist up and down having weight in hammer curl position.

To cut it short, simple body weight exercises such as push-ups, pull-ups, Knuckle-ups and chin-ups also help in developing your wrist strength.

Recovering an Injured wrist

Well, after all this guidance if you still get your wrists injured you need to give it some rest and stop punching for some time so that it may recover. As an alternative to the state of the art cryotherapy unit, contrast hydrotherapy is referred to be very effective.