Dealing With Skinny Wrists – UPDATED 2022 – A Complete Guide

Everyone has parts of their body that they would rather change. For a lot of people, that’s one of the goals of their fitness journey in 2022.

There are a lot of areas of yourself that you can improve with good exercise and diet habits, from building muscle to losing weight. Some areas are more difficult than others though, and some are down to genetics and are difficult if not impossible to change.

Skinny wrists are one such feature and are a common point of worry and low self-esteem for a lot of people. They can especially be noticeable if you have a lot of muscles in other areas of your arm.

The good news is that there are some simple exercises you can do to build mass in your wrists.

If you’re dealing with skinny wrists and wondering how you can improve them, then this updated and complete guide is for you.

 

Dealing With Skinny Wrists – A Complete Guide

Skinny wrists are usually caused by genetics. The size of your wrists is determined by your bone structure in this area, and your bone structure is determined by your DNA. If one or both of your parents have skinny wrists, then you are more likely to have them.

When it comes to the links between muscles and genetics, you might have heard negative things. People often talk about bad ab genetics or bad bicep genetics, with the reason for this being a shorter muscle belly and therefore less room for the ab and bicep muscles to grow.

Luckily, small wrist genetics is different from this and not dependent on the muscles of your wrist. This means that there are ways to manage skinny wrists through exercise.

Having skinny wrists can also cause some more serious problems. You might be at a higher risk of tendonitis than other people because the tendons in your wrist have less room to maneuver and flex. You might also notice a weaker grip strength and more pain when flexing your wrist.

If you think you might have skinny wrists but aren’t sure, there’s a simple test you can do to figure this out. The test requires a flexible ruler, a tape measure, or a strip of fabric measurement tape.

1. Take the measuring tool and find the start (marked 0) on it.
2. Place this at the top of your wrist, just below where your hand starts.
3. Wrap the measuring tool around your wrist until you meet the 0 mark.
4. The number that overlaps with the 0 is the circumference of your wrist.

If the number you measure is smaller than 7 inches (or 18.3cm) then you have small wrists.

Common Reasons For Skinny Wrists In Men

We’ve talked about small wrists being the result of genetics, and this is one of the leading causes. For men, however, small wrists tend to be especially rare and you might have wrists that are an outlier to the genetics of your father and other men in the family.

Some reasons for skinny wrists in men can include disease or being underweight and malnourished…but these are rare, and skinny wrists would be the least of your worries with these problems.

The most common cause of skinny wrists is a small or short bone structure, which therefore can lead to less muscle growth in the wrists.
How To Get Rid of Skinny Wrists?
If you want to get rid of skinny wrists, then there are two simple answers – eat well and exercise. Just like any part of your body, your wrists have muscle in them. When you do most upper arm exercises, you use your wrists, but you’re probably not working out with your wrists.

There is a difference! When your wrists are being used to support other areas of your arm, the wrist muscles are doing their part and are being used, but they’re not being built because you’re not focused on them,

To get rid of skinny wrists there are plenty of wrist-focused WOD exercises you can do, either with extra equipment like dumbbells and barbells or without any equipment needed.

Skinny Wrists & Ankles – What You Should Know?

For some, skinny wrists and ankles are seen as a positive trait. A popular test to compare who has lost the most weight or who is the skinniest is to take your thumb and forefinger and wrap them around your wrist or ankle.

If the two fingers can touch, this is a measure of having a desirable figure.

For others, skinny wrists and ankles are a sign of a problem that should be fixed. They might have been teased for it in the past and this has motivated them to fix it, but they don’t know where to start.

Maybe you’re neither of these people. Maybe you don’t have skinny wrists, or you do have skinny wrists but they don’t bother you.

What you should know about skinny wrists is that whether having skinny wrists is a goal to work towards or move away from for you, all of these responses are normal!

 

Exercises For Skinny Wrists & Forearms

By setting aside just 20 minutes a day for building strength and muscle in your wrists and forearms, you’ll be seeing noticeable results in as little as 2 weeks.

Some great exercises for skinny wrists and forearms will be using dumbbells or other weights. The wrist flexion dumbbell lift is one of these and involves holding the dumbbells in an underhand grip and lifting just your wrist to lift the weight.

Wrist flexions will work out the muscles in your whole forearm and help you build strength in this area and your wrist.

You can also do Zottman curls. These are an alteration of the standard bicep curl where at the height of the lift you rotate your palms forward and then repeat.

Some of the most effective exercises for wrist and forearm strength come in the form of alterations and additions to existing exercises. Keep experimenting with your routine to find wrist and forearm exercises that work for you.

Skinny Wrists – Closing Thoughts

So to summarize, skinny wrists are one of the few genetic features that can be changed with enough effort and patience. Like building most other muscles, it involves focusing on the problem you have with your wrists and setting incremental goals to make improvements.

For more routines for skinny wrists, skinny ankles, and skinny forearms then keep an eye out for more guides, tips, workout plans, and more from us.