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Bad Idea, Wrist Injury, And Training Like An Athlete

When I was little, and dad would run a yellow light, he’d always say that he was showing us “what not to do”. Here’s the thing. It’s usually a bad idea to show others what not to do. Because, you know… You are not supposed to do it.

Anyway… I sprained my wrist in my Sunday yoga class, showing a student how not to do the crow pose. Once you are comfortable with a particular yoga pose, it’s actually difficult to do it the wrong way, so while demonstrating, I tilted forward, and landed hard on my wrist to save falling on my face (quite literal in this case). Ironically, it didn’t even hurt until hours later, until my (right and dominant) wrist started hurting “out of nowhere”. By the evening, I could barely move it.

Great.

If there’s one thing I learned from PrecisionNutrition is to train like an athlete. The rest will take care of itself. What does that mean for training?

Injury does not equal time off training. Your body is a complex and beautiful machine – there is no reason to retire the whole thing, while one part is healing.

No push-ups for me for a little while. Or burpees. Taking few days off CrossFit, to see how wrist feels. Meanwhile, lots of lower body work + running.

WOD:

10min, 3.3 miles on stationary bike 4 sets of: 25 squats / 20 lunges / 25 situps 75 jumping jacks (these kinda bugged my wrist, so didn’t do any more) 10 min, 3.2 miles on stationary bike –> 5 x 20sec intervals

I’ve sprained my left wrist before (yes, also teaching yoga… will I never learn?), so I know that many exercises can still be done if the wrist is stable. For example, you can still do push-ups on your knuckles (especially if the wrist is taped), because it does not load the wrist joint itself.

That’s how I practiced ashtanga yoga every single day with a sprained wrist. A really cool side effect? Fighter bruises on your knuckles. My students were terrified.

Signing off, Solo

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