Drummers, This Is How Your Wrist Works

8Jan/100

Drummers, This Is How Your Wrist Works

Musical Wrists. Photo credit: firepile

If you only ever read 1 article on anatomy...

...make sure it's this one. Because when you can hack into how your wrist works and get it moving in the right way, you will notice huge differences in your playing. I know I did. More fluid grooves, faster fills and much more ease when you move around the kit. But before you can exploit this part of your body you need to understand how it works.

Your wrist is a complicated joint consisting of 8 bones. Although this gives you a lot of flexibility it does mean that there are a lot of movements to learn. This means you've got some reading, learning and practising to do. You not going to get all this straight away but... think about it. When was the last time you finished a video game on your first try?

The time invested in this is worth it because when you do learn these movements, you can really start to take advantage of them and have some fun round the drum kit. The wrist can move in 3 different ways. One of them we have already covered in What Is Forearm Rotation? The other two we'll cover in this post.

To illustrate each movement, I have added pictures of my own wrist to illustrate. And yes, (before you get a chance to point this it out in the comments) I do have skinny, girly wrists!

Extension / Flexion

This movement is the one I use the most. You use it when you play german grip. Extension is when you move your wrist in the direction of the back of your hand. Flexion is when you move it in the direction of your palm. You can see this movement in action in my article, How To Play Wrist Technique.

In these photos you can clearly see the body hack that I talked about in the wrist technique article. When your wrist is extended, your fingers naturally curl into your hand. When your wrist is flexed, your fingers straighten out. Try it now.

Radial / Ulnar Deviation

The second movement is more used in french grip. When you move your hand in the direction of your thumb, that is called radial deviation. Ulnar deviation is when you move your hand towards your pinky. Its should feel sort of like you are waving or shaking hands with someone. Try it out.

Notice how your wrist is much less flexible in this movement. You can see it in the phots too: Extension / flexion gives you nearly 180 degrees of movement. Radial / Ulnar deviation gives you less than 90 degrees. That is why I use it a lot less. In fact, if you look at the radial deviation photo on the left, you will see that I have very little movement in this direction. Much less than average. But does it stop me?

No, because everyone is different. I'm not very flexible so you're maybe more flexible than me. Or maybe you're not. It doesn't matter. You just need to do the best you can with the body that you've got.

So, try these movements. Try them in front of you right now. Do them with sticks. Build them into your playing. The more you think about how your body is working and learn how to hack the movements, the more you can take advantage of them to push your drumming.