SWORDDUELING.COM

Strong wrists help with point control. The stronger you are, the more options open up; many techniques don’t make sense until you have the muscle required to make them sufficiently accurate / fast / powerful.

Here are a couple of exercises for wrist flexibility and strength:

The training device in the second exercise, the windlass, is easy to make: drill a hole in a short dowel or length of PVC pipe, and run a few feet of rope or cord through it to a five pound weight.

Another, more sword-specific, exercise can be done with a bokken or other large stick:

1. With one arm extended in front of your body, hold one end of the bokken in a hammer grip, point straight up.
2. Roll your wrist forward and slacken your fingers until the bokken is perpendicular to the ground.
3. Reverse the motion, bringing the bokken to its vertical starting position.
4. Repeat ten or fifteen times on each arm.

If the bokken’s too light, you can use a bo staff; if it’s too heavy, grip it further from the end, so that less of its weight is levered against your wrist. Using excessive weight can be hard on your joints, so it’s preferable to add reps or just do the movements more slowly.

Aikido has some excellent wrist stretches which will both add to your flexibility and speed your recovery from minor strains.