Having small wrists is commonly known among people as the ultimate sign of being skinny. The first thing that they would do to verify if you’re skinny is to wrap their fingers around your wrist and check if they overlap. While this is completely wrong and doesn’t prove anything, you can’t blame them since it’s been a pretty common misconception for many years. And because of this, skinny people have developed multiple insecurities about their wrists and the way they look. With that being said, one of the common questions that I get asked a lot is whether or not small or skinny wrists are weaker.
Small wrists aren’t necessarily weaker. In fact, wrist size is just a way of estimating people’s bone structure and frame since it’s an area that doesn’t gain fat or muscle unless you’re extremely overweight.
In this article, we’ll explain why small wrists aren’t weaker, if they’re normal, and why you shouldn’t focus on them.
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Are Small Wrists Weaker?
In order to answer this question, I’ll talk about my own experience. Growing up, I was always extremely skinny (15 years old, 5 foot 8 tall, and weighed about 120 pounds). I was literally the type of guy that people would come up to and wrap their fingers around my wrist just to emphasize how skinny I was. I can’t blame them since my wrists were truly incredibly small and it was the very first thing that they would notice on me, especially if I was wearing a t-shirt.
Did that bother me? Not really, I knew that my bones were small and that they would naturally grow in size a little bit when I grow up and that’s exactly what happened.
However, even though my wrists were extremely skinny and small, they weren’t weak at all. I remember I was fairly strong back then. I used to beat everyone in arm wrestling which heavily requires having strong wrists. In addition to that, I could also handle myself pretty well in fights and my small wrist didn’t really affect that. It’s true that it comes down to genetics most of the time, but that’s not always the case.
Fast forward to now, I managed to gain a lot of weight naturally and build muscles since I started weight-lifting when I was 16. And you know what’s the one thing that hasn’t changed in my body? My wrists!
Except for the tiny growth due to my bones increasing in size and length, my wrist size hasn’t changed at all. My forearms and arms grew because I constantly train them but my wrists stayed the same as they were before. In addition to that, even if my wrists didn’t change in size, they’ve got so much stronger, and here are the main reasons why:
The Wrist Area Doesn’t Gain Weight
As I mentioned in the beginning, Having small wrists doesn’t imply that they’re weaker. That’s because the area around the wrist will not gain any weight or muscles unless you’re extremely overweight. And it’s the exact same reason why people use it as a way to estimate bone structure. Unless your bones naturally grow, your wrist size will stay the same. And even if they don’t naturally change, they’ll still get a lot stronger, especially if you start weight-lifting since it has been proven that resistance training increases bone density which heavily correlates with wrist size.
Genetics
This is the one thing that you can’t get away with. Genetics is the only thing that’s capable of controlling everything in our body. And that includes wrist size and strength. There are people that have been blessed genetically with super-strong wrists even though they’re skinny. And I’m pretty sure that’s what happened to me. There are also some people that have been cursed with weak wrists even though they’re pretty big. Whatever the case is for you, remember that you can always increase wrist strength using various methods such as resistance training.
Are Skinny Wrists Normal?
Having skinny wrists is completely normal and shouldn’t be concerning since the area around them doesn’t gain fat or contain muscles.
As I mentioned in the beginning, having skinny wrists only applies that you have small bones. And this is simply the result of genetics, you can’t do anything about it except resistance training which will increase bone density.
Except for not being able to wear big watches, having skinny wrists is not that bad since it will make your forearms and arms look big (just like having a small waist which accentuates your v-shape).
One of the best things that I learned while growing up skinny is to not really focus on how I look that much so I don’t build up insecurities around my body. Instead, I transferred that energy that I would’ve wasted on useless thoughts into something that benefited me which is weight lifting.
Do you have skinny wrists? Do People make fun of you or wrap their fingers around your wrist? It’s fine, it’s definitely not the end of the world. Use this as a source of motivation to kick-start your own fitness transformation journey.
Not only will you grow your wrists that way, but you’ll also develop a lot of other good habits and live a healthy lifestyle that will benefit you in the long term. It may sound challenging at first, but as soon as you get the hang of it, you’ll love every second of it.
Conclusion:
As you can see, having skinny wrists doesn’t necessarily apply that they’re weak. That area simply doesn’t naturally gain any fat and doesn’t contain any muscles that can be trained and grow. It also means that you’ve been cursed genetically but that shouldn’t be too worrying since there are hundreds of ways that you can use to increase your wrist size, the best being resistance training which will increase your bone density that controls how big your wrists are. It’s not gonna be a big growth since you’re still limited by genetics, but it’s still a good way to motivate yourself to start leading an active life in terms of fitness.
