Push up/plank arm pain

[Saffity]

Hello Bees,

I’m sure I’m doing something incorrectly so figured I’d see if anyone else experienced this and can advise me on how to change my positioning.

When I do push ups or planks I get quite a bit of discomfort/pain in my wrists. I try to keep my elbows turned sideways rather than forward, but I have hyper flexibility and have to focus to keep from over extending them.

Secondly, and specifically to the tricep exercise of the day yesterday, I must have done something wrong position wise as I have pain in my elbow but no tricep discomfort.

I understand that without seeing what I’m doing it’s hard to diagnose or tell me what I’m doing wrong, but if it sounds familiar I’d love some ideas to try.

 

[Tileenah]

You can try doing push-ups on your fists so that your wrists are straight and it doesn't hurt as much. Or you can invest in handles.
Pain in the elbow can indicate pain to the tendon so maybe if it was triceps dips your muscles weren't strong enough yet to work with your body-weight and you should try with smaller weights first? As you say, it is hard to tell without seeing what you did...

 

[Saffity]

Thanks! It definitely gives me somewhere to start!

 

[Fremen]

It can happen that there is a weaker part in an exercise, in your case the wrists.
If they hurt, change the exercise, perhaps with an easier variant: from push-ups to knee push-ups up to wall push-ups. You have to give your body time to adjust and that time is set by your weakest parts.
You don't even need to specifically train that weak part, just give it time to grow in strength and endurance.
It may even be that that weakness remains because it is part of your physique but you can still improve a lot
If you can look in the mirror, it helps to figure out what's wrong, and it's always better to do fewer reps but with better form.
The worst mistake is to insist on doing something that hurts you until you get injured, stop earlier, change your approach and experiment to see what works for you.
You save a lot more time going slow than rushing and getting injured and then having to start from scratch.
They are just some ideas

 

[TopNotch]

Additionally, when you do push-ups with the elbows out, you are putting a lot of weight on your arms, rather than using your back muscles. The closer to your sides your arms are, the easier it is to engage the back muscles when doing push-ups and planks.