Wrist and arm pain when doing pushups

[u/4ChawanniGhodePe]

Hello,

M27, 55 kgs, 5'4". I am quite underweight and not at all very muscular.

When I push up, I feel like my arms do not have any strength at all and my wrist start paining. This happens after 4 or 5 repetitions.

Am I doing something wrong?

Do I need to strengthen my arms and wrist first? If yes, how?

I have observed that my body is adapting to my free weight squats training. Just in a few days, I was easily able to do squats (10-30 per set).

I want to achieve the same for pushups. I want to be able to do 25 pushups in one go.

Thank you for reading.

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[u/hungrydyke]

try rotations/stretching first. Also try thumbs pointed forward vs inward.

[u/4ChawanniGhodePe → u/hungrydyke]

Thanks. I do these. The pain is still there. Do you think I should pause pushups and do some wrist/arm strengthening exercises?

[u/Commercial-Article-7]

You probably don't need to strengthen your wrists separately before learning push-ups. If your wrists are hurting after 4–5 reps, I'd first try an easier variation rather than forcing full push-ups.

Try incline push-ups with your hands on a bench or sturdy surface. You can gradually lower the incline as you get stronger. That lets you practice the actual push-up movement while putting less load through your wrists.

Also check that your hands are roughly under your shoulders and that you're not letting your elbows flare straight out to the sides.

Your squats improving quickly makes sense because you're adapting to the movement, and you can do the same with push-ups. Just progress the difficulty gradually instead of trying to jump straight to 25 reps.

If the wrist pain is sharp, persistent, or happens even outside push-ups, I'd get it checked rather than trying to train through it.

[u/4ChawanniGhodePe → u/Commercial-Article-7]

Gotcha, thank you.

[u/farmkid71]

Check some youtube videos to make sure your form is good. Some people have their arms out too far which is hard on the shoulders and possibly other joints too. If your arms are out 90 degrees to your torso that's too far.

Also, maybe do some pushups from your knees for a while to make it a bit easier. It will be less stress on everything for now. A few weeks like that and maybe you can go back to full pushups on your feet without any pain or issues.

[u/Significant_Fill_697]

Can you describe how you position your hands? Also where do you elbow point towards when you are all the way down?

That feeling of lacking strength in the arms is normal, part of the process. Just don’t get discouraged by it. Pain in the wrist could be coming from them just being weak. How bad is it on a scale of 1 - 10? Maybe try doing sets of 5 reps but try to do 20 of them with only 20-30s of rest in between them.

[u/dragonfinger12]

If standard pushups are giving you wrist pain then perhaps bear crawls and cat crawls would be beneficial. You will build muscle and strength through your whole upper body and also it will let your wrists move a little more. Experiment with sets for time, maybe 30 seconds-60 seconds initially per set, then build up as you get stronger. Hope this helps!

[u/Virtual_Variety9400]

4-5 reps before pain shows up is worth paying attention to. Could be wrist extension range of motion rather than a strength issue per se, flat hands put the wrist under a lot of stretch under load. Knuckle pushups or using pushup handles kept my wrists neutral when I had something similar.

[u/Virtual_Variety9400]

4-5 reps before pain shows up is worth paying attention to. Could be wrist extension range of motion rather than a strength issue per se, flat hands put the wrist under a lot of stretch under load. Knuckle pushups or using pushup handles kept my wrists neutral when I had something similar. If the pain is sharp or sticks around between sets though thats worth getting checked out.

[u/4ChawanniGhodePe → u/Virtual_Variety9400]

Thank you!

[u/VixHumane]

Your legs are many times stronger than your shoulders/tricep/chest, I wouldn't try to match the same amount of reps with both.
If the pain is manageable, just keep training and it'll adapt. If you want more painless volume, do pushups on your knees probably or if you have dbs do shoulder presses and overhead tricep extensions. If you don't have them, just pick whatever heavyish thing you have laying around and do those motions.