Knuckle pushups is another one of the many exercises to grow wrists and forearm muscles. With many variations, the basic knuckle push up does not need equipment, so it is the cheapest exercise you can do at home or in your office and before bedtime. The knuckle push up provides you with all the benefits of regular pushups, with a bonus. While the knuckle push-up toughens up your knuckles and strengthening your fingers, hands, and forearms, it also makes your wrists look bigger. In this article, we talk about how to get bigger wrists with push-ups at home (to be specific, knuckle pushups)
Overview
Wrists bone really limits how much muscles you can grow around your thin wrists. Your arm, particularly around the wrists, is made up largely and only by bones and tendons. There is absolutely very little to no muscles. So if you feel insecure and discouraged by the size of your skinny wrist, focus on growing your wrists size and forearm muscles–(triceps, biceps and other muscles in the arm) with knuckle push-ups.
Why do you have skinny wrists, anyway? I have searched and discovered that there are many shocking or surprising reasons for thin wrists. Whatever is the cause for your skinny wrists, most often, the problem of having small wrists is just in your head.
Sometimes, people don’t even get to notice your slim wrists and forearms. They might never even carry the thoughts that you have smaller wrists. Sadly, it is your insecurity that probably calls the attention of the public to notice your tiny wrists.
Some challenges of having thin wrists
If you have wrists circumference under 6 inches, you are having skinny wrists. You can compare it with average wrists size for women. The truth also is that men with bulkier arms tend to be noticeable around women more than guys with petite wrists and small arms.
Don’t feel bad about looking skinny near your girlfriend. In other situations, if you have slender wrists, don’t wear a watch that does not properly fit, and looks comically large. A big watch on small wrists can call people’s attention towards your small wrists size.
I agree with it all. There are many challenges, but there are some things you can do about having small wrists. One of the many ways to deal with the challenges and insecurities of skinny wrists is to do some simple exercises that make smaller wrists bigger.
Read More: Best dive watches for small wrists
What Are Knuckle Push-Ups, really?
Knuckle pushup is a body lifting exercises, where, instead of resting and supporting your body on flat palms, your body weight rests on your closed fists. If you can imagine how a fighter, boxer or martial artists makes a fist to punch, that is, it.
It is more challenging to do a push-up on your knuckles than it is on your flat palms. If you are scared of doing knuckle pushup to work wrists and forearms, you can always start with the simple variation.
To make knuckle push-ups easier, bend your legs so that your knees rest on the floor as additional support. A harder and intense knuckle push up is one where you raise your knees and feet.
Knuckle push-up targets many muscles, including chest, shoulders, triceps and other forearm muscles.
Related: How to make wrists bigger With Cable Machine
Steps How to get bigger wrists with push-ups
The knuckle push would not only make you have hand of steel for punches, they would increase your wrists size and make the forearm muscles massive. Like standards pushups, knuckle pushups has few variations you can try at home.
How can you do knuckle push-up to work your wrists and forearms properly? The basic technique for doing knuckle push up is pretty simple. Let us go check a perfect technique you have to maintain throughout your knuckle push up sets and reps, if you want to do it right.
How to do knuckle push-up to grow your wrists size and forearm
Here is how to do knuckle push-ups in simple steps.
1. Choose your level of comfort
Although this is basic knuckle pushup, you need to feel comfortable. Place an exercise mat on your floor and go down on your knees on it. Let your toes be flexed and your hips over your knees. The yoga mat will reduce knuckle pains. If you got none, wear padded gloves or use wrists wraps to reduce avoid potential injuries. Some people will use push-up handles or dumbbells to reduce extra pressure or strain on their wrists.
2. Clench your hands into tight fists
To clench a proper fist, extend all your 4 fingers, then curl them into your palm and bring(fold) your thumbs, wrapping the thumbs tightly over your index and middle fingers.
3. Rest your knuckles on the floor
Go down on your knees and place your hands with the tight fists on the ground, and space them about shoulder-width apart. Let the flat part of the knuckles rest on the floor surface not more than your shoulder-width apart.
4. Make proper body alignment
To avoid injury, and perform the exercise properly, align your knuckles, wrists, elbows, and shoulders correctly. Your arms should support in such a way that your knuckles, shoulder, wrists, elbow and hands all form a vertical straight line.
5. Stretch your lower limbs
Now stretch out your lower body so that your back is flat. Still with your knuckles pressed to the floor, lift your knees from the ground and straighten your legs behind, extending them to be at least your hip-width apart. Your body should form a proper alignment like an incline, rising from your ankles up to the head in a straight line–the plank position.
Tension your shoulder and distribute your body weight over your feet(toes) and knuckles. The upper body weight rests entirely on your knuckles. Tension your hips too, and squeeze your quads and glutes. Make sure your body weight lies evenly on both feet to give a proper balance.
4. Get ready to start exercises!
Note your neutral position–chest off the floor, arms straight, body straight and inclined and legs hip width apart. Take a deep breath.
5. Start to lower your body
Bend your elbows and behind, bring your chest towards hands as you lower your entire upper body towards and very close to touching the floor. Your shoulder blades should retract as you do this.
Keep your arms close to your side. Lower your body gradually until your elbow is near 45 degrees from the body, and your upper arms are the same level as your back.
At this stage, your wrist is under your elbows. Maintain some control and don’t let your body fall freely unto the floor like a log of wood.
6. pause when your chest is lowest
When your chest is very close to the floor, pause for a moment like 3-5 seconds. Hold yourself in that bottom position for some seconds. Be careful to just throw your body like a heavy weight into the ground.
7. Push your body back upward
Straighten your elbows and start to move your body upwards to the starting position. While raising up yourself, squeeze your chest and let your shoulder blades protract. Exhale as you push up your body to keep tension in the entire body.
8. repeat the knuckle pushup
Take some rest again in that upper (neutral or starting) position, then repeat the push up exercise. To build your wrists, perform 3-5 sets of 10–15 repetitions and do the exercise 3-5 times every week.
Read more: best thinnest smartwatches – perfectly lightweight for slim wrists
Tips on how to get forearm bigger with Push Ups
- Don’t do knuckle push up if you have wrists pains, arthritis and other injuries around your knuckles.
- To make the wrist strengthening workout challenging, bring your fists closer, within your shoulder width. This targets and works your triceps even more.
- Avoid too much knuckle push up. Never push yourself too hard. You must take a rest before repeating the exercise or you switch to an easier knuckle push variation.
- Hold your body so that it does not all like a piece of weight onto the floor.
- If you want to push up comfortably, put a yoga exercise mat on your floor or wear padded gloves or
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how to get bigger wrist with push-ups variations
Push has many variations, and that is true for knuckle push-ups. You can choose a variation depending on your level of fitness, your exercise goals, the intensity and comfort.
1. Knee push up
Doing knuckle push up on your knees is the easiest variation of push up that works muscle groups I your upper body, including wrists and triceps in the forearms. Remember, the bigger your triceps and biceps, the larger your wrists appear to be.
This body weight exercise is good for beginners. The knuckle pushup arm exercise is also perfect when you are done with high-intensity workout and need an easier exercise between sessions.
Knee knuckle push up still offers a full range of motion and puts less strain on your lower body muscles. In this bodyweight exercise, you place your hands with fists shoulder width apart and rest your lower body on your knees.
This exercise also engages your core and glutes when you bend your elbow and lower your body downward towards the floor.
Similar to the incline push-ups or wall push-ups, knee knuckle push-up is the best beginner-level bodyweight exercise to make wrists bigger and forearm massive. Try knee knuckle push up at home If you have skinny wrists and want to start bulking your arm muscles.
2. Decline knuckle push-up
A decline push-up is another form of push up bodyweight exercise that targets and works muscles throughout your upper body and lower body. In fact, decline knuckle push up targets your upper pecs.
This is an advanced variation of knuckle push up for full-body workout. This push requires that you hold yourself in the traditional knuckle push-up position with your feet placed on a low level bench or chair.
The chair or bench helps to raise your feet to almost the same level as your chest position, above the ground. When you lower the chest to the floor, most of your body weight is placed upon your wrists and forearm, then on your knuckles and hands.
The more your body weight, the greater the load and the tougher and stronger your knuckles, hands, wrist bone, and forearm muscles become.
Most home fitness enthusiasts, and average persons, does it in 2–3 sets of 8–12 repetitions. If you practice Kung-Fu, about 10-20 reps is a good technique.
Don’t use a very high bench or chair. Placing your feet on the high bench will compromise your plank position to do effective knuckle push up. If you are tall enough, a moderate height bench is ok, but for a shorter chair if you are shorter.
Like with other knuckle push-ups, decline push up activates your muscle groups in your upper body, including triceps, pectorals, anterior deltoids, and the serratus anterior muscle in your arm. The muscular the arms, the less skinny your wrists will look.
Read More: best forearm workouts
3. Diamond knuckle push-up
To gain more mass and strength in your upper body, another knuckle push-up variation is the diamond. In this bodyweight exercise, you bring your hands into a diamond shape to form a triangle under your chest. Diamond push-ups is just another body lifting exercise variation that activates and works your triceps in the upper forearm. Remember, if you have skinny forearms, focus on increasing forearm size as a way to increase your wrist size.
Read More : best fitness tracker for thin wrists people
Other Knuckle Push-Up Alternatives
If you want to add a variety to your knuckle push to make your wrists bone bigger, you may want to include slight knuckle pushup variation. You can choose them for the sake of comfort or to make the wrists and forearm workout more challenging.
1. Atlas push-ups
Knuckle push-ups work wrists and forearm muscles to increase your range of motion. One of the best knuckle push up variation is the Atlas push-ups, named after Charles Atlas.
To get your slimmer forearm muscles ripped with Charles Atlas’s knuckle push-ups:
- place three chairs in a T-shape
- place your hands on two of the chairs or benches and your feet on the third chair.
- Adjust to bring your hands to roughly your shoulder-width apart
- Band your arms and lower your body, chest down, between your hands
- Pause and push yourself upward to the starting position
- Do as many repetitions as you can
2. Knuckle Push-ups with push-up handles / hexagonal dumbbells
Instead of resting your entire body weight on your knuckles, you can grab a pair of dumbbells in each hand and rest them on the floor. In this case, your wrists will still be straight and you will still be able to have a large range of motion as before, but without any discomfort of painful knuckles.
- Place the pair of hexagonal dumbbells parallel on the ground, about your shoulder width apart
- With knees on the floor, grab the handles to form a fist. You notice your knuckles aren’t in contact with the surface, so the push up won’t kill your wrists and knuckles.
- Straighten your lower body and we have seen in the basic techniques of knuckle pup up earlier.
- Do 3-5 sets of at least 10 reps.
Related: How to get thicker wrists with dumbbells
3. Knuckle push-up with weights
If you are so skinny, and have less body weight, your push up may not be very challenging. One excellent way how to get bigger forearms and thicker wrists is to place more load on your arm.
Placing more barbells and other kinds of weights you can find around your home, on your back, can up the intensity of your bodyweight knuckle push-ups.
The more weighted push-ups will enable your arms to create extra resistance and make your wrists and forearms gain more muscles and strength. It does not only help to make wrists thicker, but your chest and triceps muscles are also seriously worked too.
With more weights stacked on your back, a skinny guy can quickly grow his 5 inch small wrists into big forearm and thicker wrists. With this simple trick, he will be glad to quit wearing watches for small wrists in a few weeks of training.
4. One arm knuckle push up
Like the weighted push up, a single arm push up actually places your entire body mass on only one of your hand, wrists, and forearm.
The bodyweight lifting will be highly intense and challenging with one arm, though, but the results are significant. That is how to get huge forearms and turn thin wrists into more than 6 inch wrist at home.
If you are surprised, ask bigger bodybuilders what a single arm knuckle push up means. A single arm push up can make even the smallest of men with tiny body frame, to develop really bigger forearms with huge triceps and biceps muscles.
Do knuckle push-ups do anything – benefits?
As a compound exercise, knuckle push up works many muscles and joints in your upper body. Some include the Triceps brachii at the back of your upper arm. This triceps muscle extends from your elbow and to shoulder joint.
Knuckle push up exercises also increases your forearm muscle activation. Most of the forearm muscles, when activated, significantly affect your wrists.
These muscles include brachioradialis, brachialis, flexor carpi radialis and the palmaris longus. Bulking these forearm muscles will also strengthen and grow your wrists size.
How are knuckle push-ups beneficial, then?
- Builds stronger and thicker knuckles and hands
- You got less joint strain around your wrists as compared to wrists extensions
- Knuckle push-up builds your wrist’s size, grip strength and wrist stability
- Moreover, knuckle push-ups arm workout increase your range of motion
Beware! Knuckle push ups can be bad if done wrongly
Knuckle push ups started in the time that martial arts schools were popular, but subjecting your knuckles to extreme pressure can result in arthritis, bruised swollen knuckles, big calloused knuckles and can put permanent damage on your limbs joints.
Over stressing your hands and knuckles can compromise your proper form and limit your ability to support your bodyweight. Some fitness enthusiasts use wrist wraps to protect their hands.
To prevent wrists and hand injuries, don’t do knuckle push like a dedicated Kung Fu practitioner. Use your yoga mat for added comfort. Don’t lose your fingers and gain thicker wrists!
Wrap up + FAQs
You have seen how to make your wrist strong and how to make your forearm bigger at home, even without fitness equipment. Knuckle push-ups do not need any tool, except your hands and the floor.
Knuckle push-up when done wrongly, can lead to wrist injury, joint stains or fracture. Yet it is quite the best wrist and forearm exercise because you can do it everywhere. Knuckle push up can make the small bone structure in your wrists denser, thicker and stronger both in outdoor, indoor, bedtimes, at the job site, office, and while traveling.
To quickly increase wrist size, have thicker arms, always think of doing workouts anywhere you go. In that case, you can be sure to not only increase wrist strength, but to get a big wrists size in a week or two. Check more small wrists questions.
First, do push-ups make your wrists bigger?
Do push-ups make your wrists bigger? Absolutely YES. Push-up exercises can make your wrists and forearms bigger. Push-ups target many of your upper forearm muscles, like the triceps and the biceps.
Push-ups are almost the most widely performed exercise at home. They target and tone your shoulder, abs, chest and many other upper-body muscles. There is a push up for every health and fitness enthusiast, beginners and elite athletes,
What is so shocking to me is that all push up relies on your hands and arms, but not every push up exercises help to work your arms(wrists and forearms) muscles. Some push up variations work on your legs, thighs, abdomens, shoulders, chest and the abs.
But we are going to focus only on the push up variation exercises that actually tone and work your forearms and wrists. One of the best push ups that targets, strengthens and grows muscles in the wrists are forearms is the knuckle pushups.
How do skinny guys get big wrists and huge forearms then?
There are many tutorial online on how to get bigger wrists with wrists and forearm exercises. Most of the wrists and forearm workouts include wrists curls and extensions, dumbbell weight lifting, grip or squeeze hand workouts, and push-ups.
Among the many push up variations that can make your skinny wrists and forearm bigger and muscular, is the knuckle push up. We how do I build muscle in my wrists with knuckle push-ups? Practice the exercise above.
Does increasing forearm size increase wrist size?
Absolutely yes. Training your forearms, grow the muscles there, and make your arm to get thicker wrists to a small extent, though). Your forearms can grow quite a lot if you do proper forearm workouts. When your forearms become muscular and massive, your wrists size will also increase slightly.
How can I make my wrist thicker in the office?
You can combine other wrists workouts too. For example, doing wrist extensions is the best way to start getting bigger wrists with little weights gradually. On the job site,
- you can rest the back of your forearm on an office table,
- grab a little weight like dumbbell or water bottle,
- then slowly lower the weight toward the floor and bring it up again.
- Do 2-3 sets of 10 to 15 reps each day and 3-5 days a week.
Do knuckle push-ups make hands bigger?
Yes. Knuckle pushups makes your knuckles stronger and gives your hands a stronger punch. The thicker your knuckles grow, the bigger your hands. Besides, knuckle push-ups are better than regular push-ups if you are a boxer, and want to throw punches.
What muscles do knuckle pushups work?
- Wrists
- Forearm
- Shoulder
- chest
- pecs,
- anterior deltoids
Do knuckle push-ups grow forearms?
Knuckle push-ups is one of the many variations of push-ups exercise which is really effective for thickening the arm, increasing wrists circumference and building strength in your triceps and forearms muscles.
Gearon is a 6 foot active young man, with 5.5″ wrist he feels looks small. The struggle to grow big wrist with exercises and to pick gorgeous watches for his skinny wrists, have earned him an unbeatable passion for wrist watches, especially smartwatches. As an entrepreneur and a handy project manager, he knows exactly what product quality is, in the eye of a customer and what value they expect for their money. He combined all these talents, and created this blog to share his knowledge to everyone and the fashion community.
