The best wrist mobility exercises for yoga students.

Ever feel like your wrists are the weak link in your yoga practice?

  • You’re strong enough to hold Side Plank - but your wrists won’t let you.

  • You can’t focus on your Cat-Cows because the only thing you can focus on is the dull ache in your wrists.

  • Your wrists scream whenever you shift from Plank to Chaturanga.

  • If it wasn’t for your wrist pain, you’d do arm balances for fun.

If wrist pain is affecting your practice, you’re not alone. In my previous post, “why do my wrists hurt during yoga?” - we looked at the common causes of wrist pain, and some steps to stop it. In this post we’ll dive a bit deeper into wrist mobility - what it is, why it matters, and how to improve it.

What is wrist mobility?

A popular way to explain it is:

Flexibility + strength = mobility.

It’s a helpful starting point, but it oversimplifies things. Mobility also depends on joint structure, coordination, stability, and nervous system control. That’s why someone can be both flexible and strong, but still feel stuck in their wrists.

Mobility is our ability to move our joints through their full range of motion, in a smooth, controlled way, so a more complete equation could be: Flexibility + strength + nervous system control = mobility. 🤓

Here’s how to improve your wrist mobility:

  • Flexibility: Stretch the muscles and connective tissues to gradually increase your passive range of motion.

  • Strength: Use a combination of end range engagement, weight-bearing and resistance exercises to improve your active range of motion.

  • Nervous system control: Train your brain-body connection. You can do this in a variety of ways such as proprioception exercises, gentle nerve glides, sensory inputs, and even reprogramming unhelpful pain patterns.

If I start geeking out about the nervous system, this blog will become an essay. I’ve saved that for inside my wrist-oration course where we can cover things in more depth. Today we’ll keep it simple and focus on stretching and strengthening.

Why is wrist mobility important for yoga students?

The common “hands under shoulders” yoga cue requires 90 degrees of wrist extension, but for many people, getting their wrists to a right angle is anatomically impossible - they simply can’t go that far because of their skeleton. The average range is actually closer to 70-75 degrees. 📐

If you’ve not watched my free carrying angle mini class yet, you should. It goes into more detail about how to position your hands according to your personal anatomy - and why the “shoulders over wrists” cue doesn’t work for the majority of people.

Your skeleton determines the maximum range of motion you have, but your nervous system is the gatekeeper - it controls whether you can access that end range or not.

It’s also responsible for any aches and pains you feel. These sensations are “pay attention” signals to stop you from going any further. Ignore them, and they’ll just get stronger, which is why pushing through your pain is a bad plan. 🙅‍♀️

By improving your wrist mobility you’ll be able to move with more ease and efficiency, and get as close as possible to your maximum range of motion - remember, this is determined by your bones and it’s out of your control.

You won’t be able to go further than the angle set by your skeleton, but you will be able to access your end range with control and comfort, and without the aches, pains, or excess pressure in your joints. That’s a big win!

My favourite wrist mobility exercises to improve your yoga practice.

The following exercises are from my 21-day wrist mobility challenge, a bonus part of my wrist-oration course.

They’re easy to add into your asana practice, or sprinkle throughout your day - such as when you’re at your desk, or waiting for the kettle to boil.

Remember, there aren’t any muscles in your wrists, so to improve your wrist mobility, you’ll need to focus on stretching and strengthening your fingers and forearms.

Table Top taps

Forearm stretch

Prayer hands sequence

Radial nerve glide

Table Top wrist rotations

Gorilla stretch

Sore wrists on your yoga mat?

You might need a vinyasa makeover. Watch my free carrying angle mini-class to get started, or check out the wrist-oration project if you’re ready to wave goodbye to wrist pain once and for all.

Jessica Rabone

From crying literal tears in Chaturanga, to teaching pain-free vinyasas worldwide - I’m proof you can save your wrists without sacrificing your yoga practice. I’ve helped hundreds of happy students fix their wrists inside my wrist-oration course.

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3 common yoga cues that could be causing your wrist pain.

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Is your vinyasa causing your wrist pain?