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In early September 2021, I fractured the ulnar styloid process of my wrist. I’m a powerlifter, so initially, I was devastated. The knee-jerk reaction was that I’d be out of commission indefinitely.

Luckily, my intuitions were proven wrong!

I’ve been working out at a nearly equal intensity as I was before my injury since fracturing my wrist. And if you’ve fractured your wrist, not only can you do the same, but it might also be ideal for your recovery to do so.

How to train with a wrist fracture

Firstly, when you fracture your wrist, it’s highly advised that you see both an orthopedist and a radiologist. Likewise, take a whole two weeks off from the gym after the injury has occurred. It is highly advised not to train before this 2-week break is over. This is mainly to help facilitate bringing the initial swelling down. Your body will need all the rest it can get for the first few weeks after you’ve injured it.

If your orthopedist utilizes practices such as PRP or bone marrow stem-cell transplants, they might be able to help speed up your recovery. And a good radiologist can order both an x-ray and an MRI to get you an accurate picture of the extent of the damage.

The doctor will most likely either place you into a cast or a splint for a prescribed period of time. During this period, doctors, friends, or family might suggest that you shouldn’t exercise at all.

That’s what we call bad advice.

Working out while your wrist is fractured is perfectly fine and likely beneficial for speeding up recovery. The critical factor, however, is working around the injury, not through it. In other words, if a specific exercise exacerbates the pain in your fractured wrist, do not do that exercise.

To be very specific: if the exercise causes any pain to the injured wrist, immediately make a mental note to yourself: “I am not allowed to do this until I’ve fully healed.”

Picking the right exercises, of course, will take some trial and error. In addition, the variance in severity of different wrist injuries might allow some lifters more leeway where others might only have limited options.

There are, however, many great exercises that you can do without involving your wrist.

The front squat

The barbell back squat will place too much stress on the wrist joint to make it a feasible exercise to do during your recovery. However, the front squat, when done from the cross-grip front rack position, does not place any stress on the wrist joint. Instead, the hands and wrist rest gently on top of one another and the bar.

The Zercher deadlift

The Zercher deadlift is a very unconventional movement, and it will take a lot of practice to master. Specifically, it will require a lot of lower body and upper-back mobility — what better time to work on that than while injured!?

The Zercher deadlift is more or less the same thing as any other deadlift variation. The primary difference, however, is that you hold the barbell in the crooks of your elbows. Hence, the beginning of the lift entails squatting down very deeply to grip the bar from the floor.

Likewise, when bringing the bar back down to the floor, the substantially increased range of motion does not lend itself well to placing the bar down slowly — let alone squatting all the way back down, unless you’re looking to limit the amount of weight you can use.

My approach to this is simply letting the bar go when it’s gotten back near my knees. This is, so I don’t drop the barbell on my thighs. However, if your gym doesn’t care much about noise, you can simply drop the barbell from the standing position. In either case, do so with care and caution.

The pec dec

The pec dec is a machine found in most gyms. It is a variation of the pec fly, but instead of gripping handles with your arms extended, your elbows are bent at 90 degrees while the rest of your arms rest on horizontal pads.

To use the pec dec with a fractured wrist, extend your arms outward and place the crooks of your elbows on the pads. After that, just make the motion of a standard pec fly.

The new arm position will reduce the range of motion, but this should not matter too much. If you program this lift in a way that allows you to continue increasing intensity and volume — i.e., weight, sets, and reps — it will be enough stimulation to ensure muscle and strength preservation.

Shoulder lateral raise machine

Unfortunately, the shoulder lateral raise machine is much less common than the pec dec. However, if you have one in your gym, this is another option at your disposal while your wrist fracture heals.

The shoulder lateral raise machine entails a seat where your chest rests on a pad in front of you. On each of your lateral sides, there are thick horizontal pads. Most distally from you, there are handles attached to the pads. The idea here is to hold the handles with your hands with your upper arms resting on the cushions. You then push through your upper arms using your shoulders to bring the pads up.

Using this conventional form, unfortunately, will place too much stress on your wrist joint. So instead, set your lateral elbows below the pads with your arms extended. The rest of the lift will be the same as ordinarily follows. However, I enjoy bringing my arms up as high as I can bring them while doing these to increase the range of motion on the lift. It’s like the side-delt version of Arnold’s front-delt raises.

Cable ankle cuff

Last but not least, we have an essential piece of equipment that will enable you to do endless different exercises—the cable ankle cuff.

When using the cable ankle cuff, you’ll want to wrap it tightly around your upper arm where the elbow ends. Have someone help you with this — trying by yourself will make it too loose, trust me!

With any exercise you decide to do with the cable ankle cuff, on the uninjured side, you can use an ordinary single-hand cable attachment. Don’t worry about asymmetry due to the reduced range of motion on the injured side in comparison to the healthy side; there’s a phenomenon known as the ‘cross-transfer effect,’ which boils down to the injured side reaping muscle and strength gains/maintenance from the healthy side’s work.

In the research examining the cross-transfer effect, the injured side is totally untrained; thus, it’s fair to assume that there will be no issues in our case, where the injured side is being trained with a slightly reduced range of motion of asymmetry. And even if there are, when you return to conventional lifts, you will be starting from the ground up anyway.

The prospect of not training for several months isn’t realistic for most strength athletes. And for most injuries related to strength training, their recovery should not necessarily entail simply taking extended periods away from the gym.

Likewise, an injury as serious as a wrist fracture doesn’t necessitate taking a hiatus from weightlifting. Instead, if you strategize correctly, you can successfully train around your wrist fracture.

This article does not provide medical advice. The information, including but not limited to text, graphics, images, and other material contained in this article, are for informational purposes only. No material on this article is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before undertaking a new health care regimen, and never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read in this article.