Maybe you don’t feel confident about your skinny wrists. Maybe some people noticed them and made fun of you (sad people, really). Or you have an average wrist size, but you would rather have thicker wrists anyway. Whatever the case, welcome. I tried a lot of methods and exercises, in this is what I learned over the years. To get bigger wrists, you can do curls and extensions, knuckle pushups, any exercise asking to squeeze your wrist hard (pull ups, ■■■■ ups and, deadlifts) or using hand grips. Don’t overtrain, as it will impair your everyday life and set you back weeks in your progress. And beware that your wrists can’t actually grow much in size. In the rest of this article, I’ll go more in depth about these exercises, and why you have small wrists in the first place. you have small wrists when pretty much every modern watch you try on seems huge or out of place on you.
Most men watches are 40mm in size or above, and a big part of them are 42mm and above – especially in fashion brands.
Those watches appear very big, or the lugs of the watch case may overhang your wrist or forearm. Same goes when you’re trying men bracelets (like beads, rope and leather bracelets): they are too loose. The easiest way to measure your wrist circumference is to take a soft ruler and wrap it around your wrist, just above your wrist bone. You will have a reading in inches or centimeters, depending on where you’re from. Most men with wrists smaller than 7 inches (17.8cm) consider having small wrists. I certainly can relate: mine are 5.9 inches or 15 cm. Check out the in-depth guide that I wrote on how to measure your wrist size, with uses cases and gotchas. Anyway, the actual measurement of your wrists doesn’t matter that much. It’s all about perception. If you feel your wrists are too small or skinny and want to have bigger wrists, here is what I learned. But first and foremost. Because your body is the way it is: your bone structure defines the size of your wrists.
If you were active before adulthood and practiced a physical activity involving an average or heavy use of your arms, then chances are you have average or big wrists. If you didn’t, then your radius and cubitus bones and ends solidified closer together, resulting in smaller-than-average wrists. Now, having small wrists is not a bad thing. It’s not unhealthy. It doesn’t mean you’re in a bad shape. It doesn’t mean you’re a lesser man. It’s just the way things are. We’re all different. I actually like mine. I never thought of them really until I became a watch enthusiast and noticed that most watches are just too big for me. It’s very hard to get thicker wrists. It takes time and effort, and the results are minimal. Your wrist is a ■■■■■ where some muscles are attached to. But unlike your arm – where you can train your biceps and triceps – no actual muscle is present in your wrist. This is why its almost impossible for your wrists to grow in size. To get really bigger wrists**, you would need to have thicker bones** or change the structure of your forearm and hand. Which, of course, is not an option. So, what can you do? You could gain weight, since fat is stored all around your body, including in your wrists. But since it’s not very healthy, and probably not what you’re after anyway, I really wouldn’t advise you to go that route. . What you can do is to get thicker forearms. By training your forearms, you will get thicker wrists (to a small extent, though). This is it, really. Just bear in mind that your forearms will actually grow quite a lot if you train them properly, so the actual size ratio between for your forearms and your wrists will get bigger! This might give the impression that your wrists are smaller than they actually are. At some point, I trained my forearms and wrists to wear bigger watches. I went from 5.9 inches to 6.1 inches – a 0.2 inch or 5mm increase. It’s not much of a difference on the paper by any means, but they felt a bit thicker. Your mileage may vary, depending on where you start. There are many ways to get bigger forearms, and therefore wrists. These are your typical exercises to grow any part of your body; your forearms and wrists are no exception.
Since we are looking for hypertrophy, aim for 3 to 5 sets of 8 to 12 reps. I like to do 3×12, but 5×8 works as well. Check for 4 to 6 weeks with one and then try the other and see if there are any changes in your gains.
Wrists extensions exercises work well since they work the outer part of the forearm.
You can grab any weight and rest your forearms flat on a surface, with your hands hanging and your palms facing down. I like to rest my forearms on my thighs.
From that position, you lift your hands towards the ceiling without moving anything else. A bit like you would turn a bike’s throttle handle.
Wrist curls are kind of the opposite of that.
The position is the same as the extensions, but now your palms face up. Grab a weight and lift those hands towards the ceiling without moving any other part of your arm.
It’s a bit like a mini version of your typical biceps curls.
To do those curls and extensions, you can work with dumbbells, kettlebells or barbells, they all serve the same purpose: asking your arms and wrist to grab something heavy and lift it. Even if it’s totally possible to increase your wrist size without weights, they will always get you there quicker. And probably better, since it very hard to match the kind of mass you can gain with weights. That being said, I really like to work with resistance bands. They are small, which makes it easy to put them away when you’re done. They are cheap, so you can have many of them for different “weights” (you will use the lighter ones though, there is not much strength in forearms of most people). You can train at home, anytime: a real no-brainer in my book. No gym membership hassle. And they work your forearms just as hard as regular weights.