Wrist injury (Oly lifts)

[Coty Campbell]

Injured my wrist during a light squat clean session today. During my decent from the rack position to place the bar down felt a pop and in wrist following by some severe pain. Prior to today I have experienced tenderness in the wrist from Oly lifts and pressing. Been mobilizing and taking shark cartilage to help it out but as we can see didn't help too much after today. I now struggle to pick up ANYTHING from the floor. Even something as simple as dynamax ball. Pain is located at the top of my wrist around the carpals and radius. Question is what to do and who to consult? Chiropractor? Orthepedic? Any help/feedback about this topic is appreciated. Thanks!!

[Sean Rockett]

can be a sprain of the scapholunate ligament, would go with ortho or hand surgeon

[Daniel Pope]

How does your squat clean and front squat look? Lack of mobility commonly leads to wrist problems. Here are some fixes: http://fitnesspainfree.com/?p=362

Wrist pain won't clear up typically until you fix shoulder mobility.

Hope it helps,
Dan Pope www.fitnesspainfree.com

[Chris Aysom]

Hi Sean, I've been struggling with a wrist injury for about 4 months now. MRI's showed nothing other than some swelling and it has recently been diagnosed as scapholunate ligament strain and midcarpal instability. I was told by a hand/wrist therapist that all I can really do is avoid painful movements, do plenty of wrist strengthening exercises and hope for the best.

I was wondering what sort of success rate you see in people recovering from this injury and returning to full training and competition?

[Sean Rockett]

scapholunate sprain can be a tough one to treat in a cross fitter. did you give it any rest time right away or did you kind of feel like it was not that bad and pushed through. did it start traumatically?

[Chris Aysom]

I believe it started when I caught a clean badly and over-extended the wrist. Although it didn't really hurt at the time, I started to get the pain over the following weeks. Initially I worked through it, but it obviously wasn't going away so I began avoiding all movements that put the wrist into extension, or with any loading. I then took a 4 week break of no training at all other than cardio.

I've gone back to training but avoiding any extension and loading movements and while the wrist feels a lot better than it did initially, I'm still no-where near being able to complete anything like thrusters, snatch, OHS etc

I'm starting to wonder if it will continue to improve at all, or if this is as good as it gets

[Sean Rockett]

i have seen some people who have swelling or edema in the bones of the wrist like a stress reaction from overloading , almost like shin splints but in the wrist. hopefully with rest it will get better

[Blair Robert Lowe]

Voodoo band that/those wrists.

Sprained wrists at the end of August. Missed hang clean with 70kg.

Took about 2, 2 and a half months till they were fully recovered.

For about 3 weeks, I did voodoo banding every workout and every day, sometimes 2 sessions. Eventually it wasn't really feeling any better after this and was starting to feel good.

For the first week or two, I could somewhat work cleans but a lot of it was a head thing. In time, Snatch grip, snatches, OHS and push presses could be work so long as I wrapped my wrists with the bike tubes (wannabee Voodoo bands).

Kept on using the bands till about February but by November I could do HS stuff. Early on I could not support on a set of PB.

One of the things I used after about a month was bear and crab walks or just holding the positions. Did a bunch of the wrist flexion stretches with hands on ground while sitting on knees and that used to hurt like hell.

Another exercise I used was Snatch or Jerk grip OH from a rack. Doing push presses or Snatches hurt because of the catch. For awhile, it was either catch in Power position or just do pulls. Just couldn't hold the bar for very long before it hurt and generally only up to about 50-60% of 1rm.

Also did lots of wrist rotations with a small plate or 3 or 5lb DB. Sometimes while wrists were wrapped Voodoo style for 3-5 minutes.

Good luck. I didn't have any real swelling but just discomfort and pain.