If you are practising Boxing, kickboxing, or punching on a heavy bag, your knuckles and wrists are always at risk. Therefore, strengthen your wrists to deal with the punch forces and minimize the risk of injury. Strong wrists will decrease the risk of injury and make you last punches with full power. The punching power will increase if the wrists are conditioned enough to handle the impact. Eventually, strengthening the wrists for Boxing drills can serve a more significant cause than only preventing any hurt or injury. A stronger wrist will avoid acute discomfort and keep your fists stable aligned while practising intense bag workouts.
Why do you need to strengthen your wrists for Boxing?
Having a solid wrist will reduce the movement when you land the punch, and you can land the punch with greater impact force. While punching, the wrist has to extend or flex that stretch the tendons and ligaments through a range of motion to stretch tolerance. While practising to transfer maximum momentum to the target, the wrist becomes stiff at impact. Wrists have very intricate joints so try to work on muscles and tendons to approach the target.
How to Strengthen Weak Wrists
One can strengthen their wrists with the combination of strength and resistance training along with flexibility exercises. We can even improve strength with familiar moves but slight modifications to target the wrists. Such activities include push-ups, side planks, burpees etc., to build strength in the wrists.
Boxers use various training methods to achieve the best for strengthening of wrists. Even many high-quality Boxing Gloves come with wrist support to perform well during about. We will guide you with some most effective methods of wrist strengthening.
Flexion, Extension and Deviations
Flexion, Extension and Deviation exercises are easy to perform and a must part of your workout routine while Boxing. This workout will help stretch out the tendons to promote elasticity in the joint.
- Start it by resting your wrist on the table
- Palm upright off the edge
- Gently bend your wrist down with another hand to feel a good stretch
- Hold for 5 to 10 seconds
- Return wrist to straight at starting position
- Bend your wrist up and hold for 5 to 10 seconds to feel stretch
- Repeat this 20 times
- Repeat the exercise by switching hands
On the other hand, deviation includes bending your wrist to the left and right to feel a good stretch on the horizontal plane.
Resistance Exercises
Suppose you want to achieve wrist strength and strengthen the muscles of your chest, back, shoulders and forearms. It includes wrist curls, Knuckles push-ups, Wrist Rotations, chin-ups etc. Push-up hits overall strength and especially wrists to practice punching. Moreover, one can use dumbbells while performing extension and deviation exercises; it will help increase wrist size and strength.
Stretching
Try to keep your muscles involved in stabilizing your hand, which is essential to prevent injuries. Focus on the stretch for strengthening by pushing and pulling your hand for a deep bit. Keep your hand straight out, tuck your elbow into your side, then rotate your wrist clockwise and counterclockwise.
Bag Work
Although strengthening and stretching practices will make you avoid injuries but work out to build up muscle fibres to deal with the impact of a hard punch. Start by hitting the punching bag with light throws, but make sure to keep on your Boxing Gloves. Furthermore, ramp up the speed and power, repeat these punching drills as wrists become conditioned for repeated impact. We mention a pro tip here: always wrap your hands and then use Boxing Gloves while aiming a target.
Change your Fighting Strategy and Punching Techniques
- To get the desired arm endurance during Boxing, you must review your fighting techniques by understanding the dynamics and fighting strategy. To throw and land proper punches by understanding heavier and lighter punches.
- Being a boxer, you need to relax to be comfortable. Boxing is all about dealing with pressure and finding comfort in the most uncomfortable moments. Staying relaxed is not all about being in-ring but practising staying comfortable, even hitting the heavy bag or shadowboxing.
- The development of relaxed intensity during boxing training is a standard quality of professionals. Many boxers perform intensely and hit complex but not chaotic; they look fast and powerful.
- Being a boxer, you must learn to have breathing arms, not static arms. Let your chest breathe naturally and the same thing you have to do with your arms, breathing in their movement.
- It is a pretty demotivating element if your arms are getting too tired; it will affect your speed of throwing a punch. Arm fatigue will devastate overall strength by affecting strength and energy levels.
- Throwing punches is the most exhausting thing in a boxing ring. The way you punch will make sense to improve your energy efficiency and punch technique.
- Understand the visualization of extending elbows for straight punches and swinging elbows for hooking punches. This technique will help keep punches tight and compact and help you stay connected to the core.
Exercise to Strengthen your Shoulders and Arms
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Drill with a Heavy Bag
To enhance your arms endurance, you need unlimited practice with a heavy bag to punch at face level. Punching the heavy bag will enhance coordination during sparring and strengthen your arms while Boxing Gloves on. The heavy bag is the best thing in Boxing equipment that trains you to react and move at high speed. You can also have a double-end bag to increase your maximum capacity. It makes you punch faster and develop coordination for faster movements.
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Shadowboxing
Shadowboxing is an inspiring workout as you work at a much higher speed without the need for Boxing Gloves or any Boxing equipment. It will help execute fast combinations and help to throw faster punches and strengthen your retraction muscles. Shadowboxing with light hand weights can strengthen your arms and shoulders and take you to the next level while avoiding potential injuries.
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Weight Training
Strength and Conditioning is an essential aspect of Boxing, as muscles need to be conditioned to perform well throughout the fight. It would be best to condition your arms and muscles enough to throw punches. An upper body workout will strengthen your neck, chest, arms and shoulders along with dips, pull-ups and pushups. Moreover, strengthening legs and core through squats, box jumps, planks and sit-ups are also significant.
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Conditioning Circuits
Conditioning Circuits are a fantastic way to get in shape. One can complete exercises in a circuit before a round is complete. It is an excellent way to improve overall endurance. It includes Pushups, Crunches, Burpees, Squats, straight punches, hooks, uppercuts, footwork, and head movement with intensity.
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Skip Regularly
Skipping is a way to make your arms work for a long time; get your heart pump and include it in your warm-up before starting training. However, swinging rope enables you to engage the muscles of arms and shoulders, wrists and hands.
If you can comfortably do basic skipping, one can move to advanced variations. The extended you skip it will improve your arms endurance. Such advanced variations include crisscrossing arms, the kick step and the scissor jump.
Does Boxing strengthen your wrists?
There is no doubt that Boxing makes your wrists stronger but try to consider all the safety cautions while practising. A boxer should incorporate additional strengthening exercises to increase power, speed and stability.
An Extraction:
Strengthen your wrists for Boxing, is essential to avoid any hurt or injuries, improve speed and accuracy, and increase power. Adding the above-mentioned simple exercises to your daily workout will increase wrist strength and flexibility, take your boxing practice to the next level, and make this sport fun with security.