Assessments and Exercises to Beat Wrist Pain and Weakness

Pop quiz: how many wrists do you have?

Most people can answer that one pretty easily, so here’s a follow up: when was the last time your wrists felt good?

We all put our wrists under a lot of stress, especially on our dominant hands – texting, typing, pressing buttons on the remote control… And then you chance across these weird “GMB” people on the internet who tell you to start crawling on the floor, and you realize that your wrists have never supported your bodyweight before.

It’s ok, we’ve got your back. Or your wrists. Something like that.

This episode covers basic physiology of the wrist, some of the common injuries and causes of pain, and most importantly, what you can do about them.

Listen up, because you’re about to hear your wrists say “thank you.”

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Vote on show topics, ask questions, and be part of the GMB community.

Some of the resources mentioned:

• Wrist Routine – 8 Exercises to Fix Hand & Wrist Pain
• How to Improve Your Elbows’ Health, Strength, and Mobility
• Overcoming Chronic Pain with Exercise
• Joint Noises, Popping & Clicking: Should You Worry?

Transcript of Assessments and Exercises to Beat Wrist Pain and Weakness

Jarlo: Hello everybody. This is GMB Fitness. I’m Jarlo Ilano, one of the co-founders. I’m here with my friend and GMB lead trainer, Rose Calucchia. And we’re going to talk about wrists. So again this is the GMB Fitness Podcast. That is Glamorous Model Babes Fitness Podcast. Glamorous Model Babes.

Anatomy of the Wrist

Jarlo: So we’re going to talk a little bit about the wrist. And so, that’s part of a series. You can see we have the shoulders, hips, back, foot and ankle, and this is the wrist one. So our format here, and I think people have been finding it helpful to talk a little bit about the anatomy and physiology kind of stuff that’s in the wrist, what’s commonly injured, and some hopefully practical advice for you. So let’s start with the anatomy, a little bit of anatomy.

Jarlo: So the wrist, so you have the two forearm bones, the radius and ulna, connecting your wrist to your hand. They have to twist within each other for the rotation. So your rotation doesn’t really happen at the elbow, it happens at the wrist, the radius and ulna rotate on each other.

Jarlo: Before you get into your hand, your fingers and all of that, you have a series of small bones in the wrist. The reason you have that is so we can make handshakes, so we can grasp, so we can … It’s all about mobility. We use our hands as opposed to quadrupeds. We use our hands for grasping and using tools and all of that stuff. So we don’t really spend a lot of time weightbearing on it. We’ll talk about that a little bit later. But since we’re not as adapted to that, when you start putting time on your hands doing a handstand, the locomotion, all of these things, even other types of exercises, we can strain and sprain our wrists.

Jarlo: So that’s the main thing. The corollary would be the foot and ankle, of course, that we’ll talk about a little bit later. But the bones in the foot and ankle are way more robust. We’re supposed to bear weight on it. And so, that’s the main thing to think about for the anatomy of the wrists.

Jarlo: So you have these small bones connecting the finger bones and lots of ligaments, lots of small ligaments throughout, lots of cartilage, not a lot of intrinsic, meaning muscles that are within the hand, within the wrist. You have the very long form muscles to give you leverage and control. But basically your wrist is just full of bones, cartilage, ligaments. So that can give you a little bit insight when we talk a little bit later on about what’s most commonly injured and all of that.

Causes of Wrist Pain

Rose: Yeah, great. So let’s talk about injuries for a second. We get a lot of emails at GMB. I am one of the people who answers your emails if you’re writing into us. We get a lot of questions about feeling pain or tightness or stiffness in the wrists. So can you talk a little bit about what are some of the things that can cause pain?

Jarlo: Sure. Well, again, pain is a really big topic, really expansive. You can’t just say, “Oh, it’s this or this.” But for the purposes of this, we can talk about pain generators. The wrist is generally ligamentous, ligament pain, some tendon pain, whether it’s the task the muscles performs and all of that, actual, say, bone pain. So by that I mean you fall on your hands. You don’t necessarily have to fracture it to have some bone pain. There’s bone bruises.

Jarlo: So the periosteum is this a small … Not small. Thin layer of tissue over the bone called the periosteum. When people talk about bone bruises, like you fall hard enough to hurt yourself, but it’s not a fracture, that’s usually when people say bone grooves, that’s what it is. It’s really vascular. It’s got a lot of sensitive nerve things. Those can last forever. I’m sure you’ve had one.

Rose: Okay. So talking about fall versus something like … Can you talk about the repetitive strain aspect versus overuse?

Jarlo: Sure. Right. The thing that we’ve talked about before, if you’ve listened to the other podcasts or it’s your first one, overuse, in our definition is when you aren’t used to a movement. So say you’re generally an office worker or you’re on the computer, or actually you just don’t use your hands and wrists in a way that, say, manual laborers, mechanics, plumbers and all of that. They have strong wrists, strong arms, everything like that.

Jarlo: Then you decide to even play with your work’s softball team. That’s a good one. Softball or baseball. And you’re swinging a bat and you’re not used to it. You can tell that your wrists have to move a certain way. You have to do that. Then either a few hours later or the next morning, you’re like, “What is going on here?” The muscles in your hands or the ligament, your wrist hurts. That’s overuse. That’s overuse.

Jarlo: Now if you were to have gradually built up to it, take a few swings here and there, once a day, all of that, it probably wouldn’t be as bad. So that’s overuse. The same thing. I’ve had people, my friends and other clients too, who are like, “Oh, I tried rock climbing.” That’s a good one, bouldering. Now there’s so many nice indoor places. They’re like, “Oh, I tried rock climbing.” Great. But the next day, their hands and their wrists are like, “What the hell?” Basically overuse, it’s in the name. You’re not used to it.

Jarlo: That’s as opposed to repetitive strain things. So with the repetitive strain stuff, people are pretty aware of things like carpal tunnel and the different wrist tendonitises either near your thumb and all of that. People would really attribute it to office work and stuff like that, but really it’s say you’re used to doing something.

Jarlo: It’s not like you haven’t typed before and it’s not like you’re not built up to it. But for whatever reason, one week, one day, it’s just too much. Maybe you were sick, maybe you had other things going on, but your body just wasn’t able to recover from it. So that’s a good way to talk about repetitive strain.

Jarlo: Then that builds up because then you have to go and work again. You have to do all these things. That’s why like the field of ergonomics and having braces and all of that really helps, because it takes away as much of the forces and tensions as possible. Not all of it, but enough to give your body some time to heal and recuperate. So in terms of exercise and things, it’s usually going to be overuse, like you just totally went into it and you shouldn’t have.

Rose: You went ham and you weren’t ready.

Jarlo: You went ham. That’s the thing, though. It’s like, oh, yeah, you want to get started, something new, and it’s fun. Maybe you don’t even realize it at first. So that’s the hard part. My thing is always like do half of what you think, half of the intensity, half of the reps, and then see how you feel the next day. It’s hard. It’s hard to be patient. It’s hard to be patient.

Jarlo: For my particular story, I remember a few years ago, maybe it’s more like 10, I went to a handstand workshop. Or not all of it was handstands, but it was about two or three hours. I wasn’t doing a lot of handstand work, but I was doing a fair amount. But I just kept doing it during the workshop. The teacher was like, “Oh, be careful,” whatever. I was like, “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m fine.”

Jarlo: Then a few hours later, I was like, “Oh, that was not good.” It took me over a week, maybe even two weeks ago, to get over it. So it is about being patient. It’s hard. It’s hard.

Questions about Elements and Locomotion

Rose: Yeah. So we get a lot of questions about Elements, which is all locomotion. It’s all on our hands. And so, do you have any advice for people who feel it a lot in their wrists when they start working on the Elements program? We usually say, like what you just said, do about half as much time on your hands. But what else can people do to strengthen and stretch out their wrists to help that process?

Jarlo: Right. So in Elements in particular, and actually the other programs we’re having when we have locomotions and all of that stuff, we always have the warmups, preparation, the wrist prep, with your fingers are facing forward or backwards, which is great. It’s awesome. But people who can even tend to overdo that too because you think, “Oh, I’m just going to be here. I’m just going to move back and forth a few minutes.” Sometimes even just doing that is too much.

Jarlo: And so, for those people, we recommend spending some time just doing that on your own for a few minutes, actually not even doing it where you’re flat on the floor. But say you’re sitting down and then you have a coffee table in front of you. When you do that type of thing … And you guys can … I hope you can visualize that. When you have that, where you’re not straight on the floor, but you’re sitting. Then you can have some place in front of you that’s a little lower. You can really control how much weight you have on your hands, because that’s the main thing.

Jarlo: Just think about it as lifting weights. If you sit down on the ground and then you’re going to do it right on the ground with your hands flat on the ground in front of you, that’s going to be nearly half your body weight, maybe more. But if you’re sitting in a chair and you have a table in front of you, maybe a little lower, or you’re standing in front of a table, you can do much less of a percentage of your body weight. So I think that’s a good way to start.

Jarlo: Then also, yeah, you don’t go to fatigue. So you do half the reps you think. Even if you feel good, you rest a little bit longer than you think. That’s for preparation and that’s the kind of the extra stuff you can do. When you go ahead and you’re doing the locomotion work, you’re on your hand and you’re doing the crawls, that’s where it’s really important to stop way before. Stop way before you think you can.

Jarlo: There’s time for that later on. After you’re used to it, maybe it’ll take you two or three weeks, a month, but that’s when you can really work on it hard. But if you’re just running into your wrist hurting, that means you can’t do the things that will make you better, and you’re going to be limited by your wrists. So, yeah, that’s a good question. It’s also probably the most common thing, common problem of starting the locomotions.

Rose: Yeah, same with handstands.

Jarlo: Yeah, and handstands. Anything inverted.

Rose: People are, “It’s really fun. It’s really fun. I want to keep going. I want to keep going. Oh, my wrist doesn’t hurt that bad.” Well, if your wrist has already started hurting, continuing to work on it is not a great idea.

Jarlo: Right. Then you won’t get the benefit of all the rest of this stuff because you’re just limited by your wrists. And so, what are the things that are hurting in there? Yeah, again, these small ligaments. What it is is, first, we’re not used to weightbearing on our hands. That’s a big one. But the other thing is we’re not used to all of these various motions. Maybe we were used to going back and forth, but the side-to-side, the joint rotations, and all of those that come … They happen so quickly when you’re on the ground.

Jarlo: Again, a good correlation is the foot. The foot has the same bones … Not the same, but a little bit more robust. But it’s not like a solid foot to an ankle that just moves back and forth in one direction. There’s a lot of play because the ground is … We evolved to walk on ground that’s uneven, doing all these things. And so, the same thing with the wrist. We’re just simply not used to it. We’re not used to it.

When to See a Doctor

Rose: So when is it time to see a doctor versus waiting it out, staying off your hands as much as you can, doing wrist prep and stretches as much as you can? I know more than anyone else wrist injuries can take forever.

Jarlo: Right. That’s a good question.

Rose: So when you see somebody, “Why do they take so long?”

Jarlo: Right.

Rose: Let’s talk about that.

Jarlo: So one of those things, and this kind of applies to a lot of pain or a lot of injuries throughout the body, one thing is if it’s painful all the time, all the time. So let’s go the other way. So your wrist bothers you, but only when you start doing, say, the bear or some other locomotion, only that. Then you’re probably fine to stretch, take it easy, work through it.

Jarlo: But if your wrist or your thumb or your fingers hurt all the damn time, all the damn time, you could be sitting here and it hurts, that’s not good. You need to see somebody because either something is broken or torn. It’s just not good. So that’s number one. It seems like common sense, but, man, I’ve fallen to that. I’m like, “Oh, I’ll be fine.” So that’s one thing.

Jarlo: Then the other thing for it is it just straight up worsens at night. So it feels bad all the time, but say you’re sleeping is poor, that could be an indication of something else. Then also anything where you’re getting numbness, tingling, those types of things.

Jarlo: Otherwise, I’m not saying you don’t need to go to the physical therapist or other rehab professional, but you can do it on your own. You can. It just might take you longer. Then we are recording this in the time of COVID-19. So what do you do when you can’t go out? Or beyond that, you don’t have access to the good healthcare professionals. That’s a very common thing.

Jarlo: So, yeah, when it’s really big like that, like we’ve said, super painful all the time, it gets worse at night, numbness, tingling, yeah, definitely go to the doctor. Otherwise, the stuff that we’re going to talk about here, it can take you far.

Jarlo: Now another reason why it takes so long is there could be blood supply issues to the ligaments. Also, even though we talk about we don’t put a lot of weight on our hands, we don’t do that stuff on the ground, we do use our hands and our wrists way more than we think throughout the day, pushing ourselves off chairs, grabbing things, carrying things, all of that.

Jarlo: So, again, we don’t want to put yourself in a cast or a big brace, but it does take time. It takes a long time. I’ve had it for myself. I think I told you I was grappling, doing wrestling, BJJ, with a guy a couple of years ago at the gym. He wasn’t being spazz or anything. It just happened. I put my wrist out to stop him, bent it back. I’m like, “Oh, that sucks. It’s sore.” It took me six months.

Rose: Yeah.

Jarlo: Right. Not for like, “Oh, it hurt every day,” but I couldn’t do, say, the front rack and cleans and front squats. I couldn’t do handstand stuff. I couldn’t do that kind of stuff. That was the main thing.

Jarlo: So we’re talking about relative things. It takes a long time, especially if you’re doing the weird kind of stuff that we do. Okay, go. All right. What else? What else we can talk about?

Joint Noises, Hypermobility, Joint Receptors

Rose: Well, I had a question about joint noises, because that’s another one. So even the times when I’ve had pain in my wrist or not had pain in my wrist, I have a lot of popping and adjusting that happens. Usually it feels good. There’s not really any pain involved. But it’s very alarming for most of us when we have big cracks or adjustments that happen. How does that work into this?

Jarlo: Well, yeah. Again, we have this nice article that we put up, the joint, joint noises, GMB. Just Google GMB joint noises. We’ll also put it in the show notes. But it gives you a little bit more of a background of what those are in general.

Jarlo: For the wrists specifically, one of the things that’s interesting is … And it’s really difficult to say this, but you shouldn’t talk a lot about bones out of place or adjustments because that’s not true. I mean it would be really painful. I mean dislocations are dislocations.

Jarlo: So we were talking about the wrist and stuff, but I remember back in high school, I was in gymnastics class. We had that. Basically we were in it because there’s cheerleaders were in it. It was stupid. It was great, but there were cheerleaders in it.

Rose: Confession.

Jarlo: Right. It’s just the way it is. But, oh man, I remember watching. We were sitting down, we were watching them do backhand springs, and this cheerleader, this girl, she was doing good. All of a sudden she just falls and just screams, “Blegh!” just loud. She dislocated her elbow on backhand spring.

Jarlo: I ran up–I was actually doing some training things at the time, athletic training–I looked and it was a crime scene. It looked like a movie. Stuff was out. People were like, “Oh, what should we do?” I was like, “Well, don’t touch her.” That’s number one. Just go get somebody. I don’t even remember if the teacher was there at the time, but we had to get an air cath. Anyway, so when people talk about bones around this stuff, that’s really when bones are out.

Rose: That’s the extreme case.

Jarlo: That’s the extreme case.

Rose: That’s like … Yeah.

Jarlo: But when you’re talking about the wrists … So say the wrists, I would say some of the ankles, the sacrum. They can have areas that are way too mobile, way to mobile. And so, this is simplifying it, but when you have joints that are way too mobile, and especially in the wrist, they cannot so much shift, but what happens is if they go out of a certain zone, there’s joint receptors and ligament receptors that will try and create as much tension around it as possible.

Jarlo: So there aren’t a lot of those really intrinsic muscles in there, but there’s enough that will do that. And so, once you are out of that zone, your pain goes much higher, all of that thing, all of that stuff. So when people do, say, joint mobilization, the manipulations, either from a therapist or a chiropractor and all of that, what they’re doing is they’re … I don’t want to say reset, but that’s what it is. They’re just encouraging those receptors to chill out.

Jarlo: And so, sometimes that’s accompanied by a clunk or a pop. That’s because of the synovial joint capsule. That’s what’s making the noise usually. And so, that’s why it does feel like it’s like, “Oh, they moved my bone back into place.” That’s the subjective feeling. It’s not really what’s happened, but also it’s also why it helps, because the jiggling around, doing all that stuff.

Jarlo: That’s the thing. You can call it whatever you want, adjustments or manipulations or subluxations or whatever. But the technique of actually doing it does work. It’s worked for, what, a couple hundred years now or more.

Jarlo: So that’s what that is. It’s usually because in the wrists in particular, there’s hypermobility. They don’t have that stability of the joints. So when it shifts out a little bit more, especially, again, when you’re doing your stuff like handstands and inversions and even in your things, when you’re doing performing arts where you’re hanging on things, ropes and trapezes, that traction where you’re pulling your bones apart just because of the action of what you’re doing, that can be a contributor to those joint receptors and all of that. Kind of complicated.

Rose: Fascinating.

Jarlo: Yeah. I hope that makes sense.

Common Wrist Injuries and How to Adjust

Rose: Okay. So I have a list of common injuries. If you could just give us a little information about some of these.

Jarlo: Let’s do it.

Rose: I’ve had all three of these …

Jarlo: Have you?

Rose: … with my wrists. Okay, so let’s talk about cysts first.

Jarlo: So cysts … Yeah, cysts are interesting.

Rose: Because those can be a real pain.

Jarlo: Right. Cysts, in particular on the wrist and also in the ankle, ganglion cysts is probably what you’re talking about.

Rose: Yes.

Jarlo: They really don’t know. One of the theories is that we have small cysts anyway. Then ganglion cysts are when there’s trauma and those cysts build up together and they make a mega one. That’s one theory. I don’t know.

Jarlo: The other one is that there’s trauma and injury, and then there’s actual tears in, say, ligaments and capsules. Then the fluid and all of that stuff that’s supposed to be in those capsules goes out of it, then you form a cyst.

Jarlo: That’s probably the most plausible theory, but again it’s a theory. They don’t know for sure, but it is very common. It’s usually accompanied by an injury or repetitive stress. The ganglion cyst usually is on the back of your wrist, so it limits extension or limits bending back. It can be big or small. Do you know what they used to do, the Bible treatment for it? In the Bible?

Rose: Yeah, they just smash it.

Jarlo: Yeah, slam it, which, man, I guess it worked. But I don’t think that’s great.

Rose: It sounds horrible.

Jarlo: So they usually just drain it. They usually drain it if it’s super big. Get a syringe and drain it. The thing is-

Rose: They come back.

Jarlo: … they come back. They come back and it’s usually because you’re doing the things that maybe you want to do. I’m not usually a big fan of taping and bracing and stuff like that, but when you do have, say, an acute case of having a cyst, or maybe you got it drained and you want to make sure you’re not making it worse, that’s a useful thing. So that’s basically what cysts are.

Rose: So if you have one, it usually hurts to put weight on your hands when your hands are flat on the floor. Does continuing to do that cause further … Does it cause damage, or is it okay to still do stuff? I’ve heard different things-

Jarlo: Yeah, that’s a hard one to say, right?

Rose: … that it’s okay pain because it’s not damaging anything, but yet it still hurts.

Jarlo: Right. That’s a hard one to say because, again, if we knew exactly why they happen, then we could tell you. But if the theory that there is some kind of a hole where stuff is supposed to stay in but it’s not, then, yeah, it could make it worse.

Jarlo: But again, this is all kind of you do what you should. You shouldn’t not do anything. After a week or two, you shouldn’t not do anything. You can tell if it’s getting worse. You can. You can see it. Is it getting bigger, right?

Rose: Right.

Jarlo: Is the pain getting more worse? So this is another case of, well, you play it by ear and you trial and error, which almost nobody likes to hear. But that’s a lot of what we have with musculoskeletal problems, trial and error.

Rose: Right.

Jarlo: Yeah. I would err more on the side of doing more motion, especially after the first three weeks or so.

Rose: That doesn’t necessarily mean weightbearing, though. That means range of motion.

Jarlo: It doesn’t necessarily mean … Yeah. Yeah, we can talk about it now. Weightbearing with, say, some accommodations. You can use pushup bars or parallettes or even yoga blocks where you’re trying to keep your wrists fairly neutral, meaning not as bent back or bent down or flexed. And so, even towels. You put it on the base-

Rose: So having your fingers off the side of the yoga block.

Jarlo: Fingers off the side of a yoga block or say you have a towel where you put it on the base of your palm so that your wrist is not as extended one way or flexed the other. So more neutral, meaning your fingers, your wrist, and your forearm are more in a straight line.

Rose: Got it.

Jarlo: Great.

Rose: Okay. What’s the difference between sprains and strains and how do you go about working with those on the wrist?

Jarlo: So the sprain, a sprain is ligament injuries … So sprain, S-P. Strain with the T is muscular, muscular and tendinous. Sprains take way longer. This is like jamming your wrist, jamming your finger, someone tried to pull your wrist hard, the ligamentous injuries and issues. Strains, pulling your muscle, tendonitis kind of stuff. Well, that’s opening up a whole another issue.

Rose: Do you feel like sprains are more common with wrists?

Jarlo: Yeah, I think so, and also more commonly going to give you problems. So the sprains are usually, again, falling on it, banging it, force where someone pulls on you or you’re pulling something, something that’s quick and direct.

Jarlo: Strains are usually overuse. Yeah, you could say it would … Say you stretch your hand down and it flexes. It cocks it down. Theoretically, that can strain your forearm muscles and all of that, but that’s a lot. Usually the force is going to go on the wrist and the ligaments. Muscular strain in the forearm is usually from things like racket sports, tennis, racket ball, that type of thing. Then now you’re going into more elbow things, which we’ll not talk about right now.

Rose: Right. Okay. So what about something like carpal tunnel?

Jarlo: So carpal tunnel and other nerve compression syndromes. So carpal tunnel, carpals are those small bones between your forearm bones in the hand, hand bones. So those are the carpals. The tunnel refers to where nerves run through. So carpal tunnel is median nerve. So you have median-radial. Radial is near your thumb, ulna by your pinky.

Jarlo: And so, that type of thing is usually from repetitive stress or even overuse. But that tunnel gets smaller for some reason because of the inflammation of the sheath and all these things. Hard to recover from. They do all these surgeries, which, again, that’s opening up a whole new can of worms because some people are like, “Surgery doesn’t really do anything.” What it is is you’d get the surgery and it makes you rest for two months. Right?

Rose: Right.

Jarlo: Right. Oh man. Anyway, yeah, that’s usually what it is. It’s a nerve irritation thing either from the inflammation. Maybe it’s so compressed that it does give you numbness, tingling, all that type of stuff. That kind of thing, yeah, you definitely need to see somebody.

Rose: Does the stretches in our wrist guide, can those help with carpal tunnel?

Jarlo: Yeah, they could help. I wouldn’t say they’re going to be fully all you need. But a lot of the stuff for carpal tunnel is you have to try and reduce the forces to it. You have to give yourself time to heal. Now we’re talking about should you get a shot, cortisone injections, you get surgery, you should braces.

Jarlo: That’s way too much to talk about right here. But if you use a little bit … Not commonsense, but work on the wrist thing, work on it gradually like we talk about, and then you can see … Generally, if your case is more mild, then you can do a lot of stuff on your own. It’s hard. That’s a hard one, man, carpal tunnel stuff.

Stretching and Strengthening

Rose: Yeah. Well, those are the big ones I hear about. I don’t know if you have anything else you want to make sure that we talk about today. But, in general, doing the wrist prep exercises that we have can increase range of motion-

Jarlo: And strength, because of the way we do it.

Rose: … and strength.

Jarlo: Yeah. And so, that’s another thing, too. People think, “Oh, stretches versus strengthening.” They can be both, especially the way we do it, because, again, we’re trying to increase how much weight we can put on it, gradually. That’s progressive resistance.

Jarlo: So say you started sitting in a chair, the table. Then after you get better at it, do lots of good reps. Then you work your way to put more weight on it. Say you’re standing up. Then you’re going to lean into the table. Then you go into the ground on your hands and knees. Then you go up. And so, you’re more like you’re on an A frame or this downward dog and you do even more.

Jarlo: So that’s how it is. You’re stretching, but then you’re going to stretch it and move it, because we like to stretch and move, the FF protocol. You do it with gradually increasing resistance, meaning how much more weight can you put on it?

Jarlo: So that’s the thing. We’re not just stretching, we’re not just warming up. It’s actually strengthening and gradually improving your capacity to bear weight on your wrists. That’s huge.

Jarlo: It takes not just months, it takes years. There’s the reason that there’s these professional acrobats and hand-balancers and performing artists, they’ve spent years doing this. Otherwise, they’d be screwed. Otherwise, they have a really low careers, man. You know this. You’ve seen it.

Rose: Right. I mean that’s why I injured my wrist. It was way too much, too fast when I started training on my hands. I was even in an audition where we had to fall off of something really high. That’s what started my ligament tear. I had a torn wrist, I had a cyst. I had to get surgery to repair it. It was all too much, too fast.

Jarlo: Yeah. For most people listening to this, and most of our clients here, our GMB clients, it’s not going to be that extreme.

Rose: No.

Jarlo: And so, our programs here take that into account. You’re not going to be on your hands four hours a day like a professional performing artist. But even five to 10 minutes a day can be a lot. So working your way up to that is essential.

Jarlo: Then once you get to that point, man, you’re going to be way better off than 90% of other people in terms of what your wrist can bear and actually be protective of a lot of these overuse and strain injuries and things.

Jarlo: So that’s why we do these and why we do the programs is because it’s so much benefit for being on your hands. We’re being really doomsayers here, like, “Oh my god,” but there’s a reason why we’re just like, “Oh, we just won’t do it then.” No, the benefits, the positive benefits, outweigh the negatives so much here.

Rose: Well, that’s really good to hear too because sometimes people start Elements and they’re like, “Oh, I shouldn’t do this because it hurts my wrist.”

Jarlo: Right, right.

Rose: And so, that’s not necessarily true.

Jarlo: That’s not true. It hurts your wrist because you’re not ready for it. But wouldn’t you be much better physically prepared for everything you can do if you do this and get ready for it? So that’s why we have the programs. That’s why we have locomotion and why we really, really love them as an exercise. We’ve had thousands of people say the same thing to us: “I’m so glad I did this.” So it’s worth it. It’s worth it.

Rose: Sweet. Thanks, Jarlo. This is super informative. It’s one of my favorite joint areas to talk about.

Jarlo: Is it?

Rose: It is.

Jarlo: It’s fairly complicated. This is hard because I’ve had to hedge a lot of these things. But I hope everyone got something out of it. If you have any questions, let us know, howdy@gmb.io is our email. We might even have Rose answer you.

Rose: You might.

Jarlo: Yeah. Anything else? Well, thanks so much.

Rose: Thank you.

Jarlo: Everybody have a good day. Bye.

Rose: Bye.

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