# Is it easy to break someone's wrist by simply grabbing it and squeezing great pressure?



## Bullshidog

A staple of action movies, video games, and martial arts anime/manga is a grappling match that ends almost instantaneously between the hero and the generic bad guy mook. 

As soon as they engage wrestling each other,the first act the badass hero does is grab his much weaker foe by his wrist. 

Within a second or two,hero applies such physical pressure on the grabbed bad's wrists that a loud snapping sound is made and the bad guy's wrists are literally broken that you literally witness the hand bending as though its been hit with a hammer and permanently deformed. Looking something like these hands in this pic. 

http://s3.amazonaws.com/f01.justans...87j/2011-12-31_071104_snapshot_20111231_2.jpg

The bad guys yells out loud and immediately falls on his knees and cowers before the hero or runs away for his life in terror.In the few cases its a tough son of a *****, the villain will no longer be able to continue using his hand that just got squeezed by the hero. 

For added laughs,some action movies even shows an X-Ray special effect visual where they show the wrist area was literally cracked in half showing just how injured arm is. 

In the case where both hero and villain are equally strong(or if one is weaker, he is at least comparable in strength to the other ),even one brief squeeze on the arm will hurt the victim immensely (even if it doesn't do any serious harm that affects the fight long term) that alters the grappling match and changes fight's direction.

The fact the victim didn't get his wrist broken after getting squeezed is often stated by bystanders in the movie watching the fight as proof to just how strong both opponents are even if the victim yelled immense pain. 

In fact I notice storytellers use this "Squeeze the wrist" by the villains with the heroes screaming in pain as to how serious the new villain is and how at this point the upcoming battles in the plot will no longer be against untrained pathetic mooks.

Its gotten such a common way to display just how strong people are that I noticed irl when two people untrained in martial arts start grappling, the stronger one will often immediately grab the wrist area and squeeze it almost as though to show just how much stronger they are and inversely I seen some bodybuilding types intentionally let other people try to squeeze their own wrists to show off how stronger they are than their fellows in the gym.

I am curious in real life if you can simply break people's arm this way merely by grabbing their wrist area and squeezing brute strength without any technique or leverage or whatever? 

I already seen too many people attempt to copy the movies in real life brawls or some people attempt to show of their strength by letting others squeeze their wrist area and in the former I have yet to see anyone get their wrists so broken that their hands are flipping down like they were shaped like weapons.

Even the bodybuilders I mentioned admitted that letting the weaklings in the gym such as the recent nerds who signed up so they can get buff and attract the ladies or so they can fight back at bullies admit that their own wrists were hurt afterwards. 

So I am quite curious how squeezing the wrist area and how much it hurt if its an accurate indicator of physical strength?

Assuming it takes more than mere brute force to break someone's wrist and leave their hands hanging like in the movies and anime/manga, would it be quick and easy if you already know the proper techniques? Or is this like disarming a knife, a technique glamorized and exaggerated with flashiness that in reality is incredibly difficult to do and more dependent on "lucky opportunities" and quite rare even if executed properly by masters?


----------



## Blindside

No it isn't easy to break a wrist by grabbing and squeezing and it isn't a particularly sensitive part of the body.


----------



## Touch Of Death

If you get some momentum behind the grab, you can dislocate the shoulder.


----------



## Jenna

Yes, grabbing and squeezing a wrist per se will do little in an attack besides maybe  get you blindsided or headbutted.. and good luck getting a comprehensive hold of attackers wrist from a strike without any training..  and but yes! there are a number of wrist manipulation techniques (Aikido, Hapkido, Jujitsu etc) which can indeed dislocate and /or break a wrist under the correct circumstances.. It is a matter of simple body mechanics.. we are all made after the same fashion.  It is not a matter necessarily of brute strength, quite opposite.. uke puts enout momentum into either his attack or his resistive effort and/or is insufficiently trained ukemi and joint flexibility and the lock is correctly applied then physics will take care of the rest.  

Christian Tissier - Shomen Uchi Sankyo - omote - ura - YouTube
You can see these are done at practice speed and plus his uke is well practiced ukemi and but other circumstances can lead to other (more broken) outcomes even in the dojo.

It is not as glamorous as your comic portrayal / Steven Seagal movies depict.. A messed up wrist is a difficult fix and can take long recovery (I testify ) Jx


----------



## Shai Hulud

It's a part of the human anatomy built to take punishment. You'd have to have the strength of a mutant to do that.


----------



## Chris Parker

Movies, dude…. movies. I heartily recommend stopping looking for anything other than what looks good on a screen to tell a story there… it's entertainment, not reality.


----------



## Spinedoc

It would take an insane amount of strength and I say that as someone who is much stronger than average. That being said, Ueshiba Morihei, the founder of Aikido, reportedly (according to his students) had some kind of freakishly, almost mutant like strength with grabbing, and his students would often feel "popping" (likely ligamentous) when he applied pressure and he would apparently squeeze so hard that it felt as though he was just going to crush the radius/ulna. All of his students would spend their off hours trying to strengthen their grasp so that they could duplicate it, but none of them could. It seems it was just something Ueshiba was born with. 

Additionally, there is one current prisoner in the US federal prison system that can, and has broken bones simply by squeezing them (my ex-wife works in federal law enforcement for the prison system), in fact, he once broke another inmates ankle simply by squeezing it. He is also so freakishly strong that he is able to break handcuffs if they are put on him. When he is transported extra precautions, and the use of cast iron shackles with multiple thick chains are used. In fact, his strength was featured during a show on supermax prisons one night on Discovery Channel. 

So is it possible…….yes. Could anyone simply train and do it? No way.


----------



## MJS

Bullshidog said:


> A staple of action movies, video games, and martial arts anime/manga is a grappling match that ends almost instantaneously between the hero and the generic bad guy mook.
> 
> As soon as they engage wrestling each other,the first act the badass hero does is grab his much weaker foe by his wrist.
> 
> Within a second or two,hero applies such physical pressure on the grabbed bad's wrists that a loud snapping sound is made and the bad guy's wrists are literally broken that you literally witness the hand bending as though its been hit with a hammer and permanently deformed. Looking something like these hands in this pic.
> 
> http://s3.amazonaws.com/f01.justans...87j/2011-12-31_071104_snapshot_20111231_2.jpg
> 
> The bad guys yells out loud and immediately falls on his knees and cowers before the hero or runs away for his life in terror.In the few cases its a tough son of a *****, the villain will no longer be able to continue using his hand that just got squeezed by the hero.
> 
> For added laughs,some action movies even shows an X-Ray special effect visual where they show the wrist area was literally cracked in half showing just how injured arm is.
> 
> In the case where both hero and villain are equally strong(or if one is weaker, he is at least comparable in strength to the other ),even one brief squeeze on the arm will hurt the victim immensely (even if it doesn't do any serious harm that affects the fight long term) that alters the grappling match and changes fight's direction.
> 
> The fact the victim didn't get his wrist broken after getting squeezed is often stated by bystanders in the movie watching the fight as proof to just how strong both opponents are even if the victim yelled immense pain.
> 
> In fact I notice storytellers use this "Squeeze the wrist" by the villains with the heroes screaming in pain as to how serious the new villain is and how at this point the upcoming battles in the plot will no longer be against untrained pathetic mooks.
> 
> Its gotten such a common way to display just how strong people are that I noticed irl when two people untrained in martial arts start grappling, the stronger one will often immediately grab the wrist area and squeeze it almost as though to show just how much stronger they are and inversely I seen some bodybuilding types intentionally let other people try to squeeze their own wrists to show off how stronger they are than their fellows in the gym.
> 
> I am curious in real life if you can simply break people's arm this way merely by grabbing their wrist area and squeezing brute strength without any technique or leverage or whatever?
> 
> I already seen too many people attempt to copy the movies in real life brawls or some people attempt to show of their strength by letting others squeeze their wrist area and in the former I have yet to see anyone get their wrists so broken that their hands are flipping down like they were shaped like weapons.
> 
> Even the bodybuilders I mentioned admitted that letting the weaklings in the gym such as the recent nerds who signed up so they can get buff and attract the ladies or so they can fight back at bullies admit that their own wrists were hurt afterwards.
> 
> So I am quite curious how squeezing the wrist area and how much it hurt if its an accurate indicator of physical strength?
> 
> Assuming it takes more than mere brute force to break someone's wrist and leave their hands hanging like in the movies and anime/manga, would it be quick and easy if you already know the proper techniques? Or is this like disarming a knife, a technique glamorized and exaggerated with flashiness that in reality is incredibly difficult to do and more dependent on "lucky opportunities" and quite rare even if executed properly by masters?



No, it's not as simple as grabbing and being capable of crushing bones.


----------



## Tony Dismukes

Easy, certainly not. Possible? I guess so. If you have a professional strong man who specializes in feats of grip strength grabbing the wrist of a scrawny coach potato he might be able to break the wrist just by squeezing.

In general, any time your question is "Is real life like this action movie/anime/tv show?" then you can save time by just assuming the answer is "No."


----------



## Spinedoc

Agreed Tony, some people are just freakish. The one guy that was in the prison here was a big man and they were getting ready to transport him, and went to cuff him….He asked them nicely not to cuff him and promised he would behave. The guard explained it was policy and they had to and put the shackles on with the thick chain. The prisoner sighed, flexed and promptly snapped the chain like a twig. The guards drew their firearms, and the prisoner just smiled and said, "I told you I would behave…….I really don't like cuffs"….That's scary. LOL..


----------



## Mephisto

You guys saying this is just fantasy from movies clearly didn't read the part where the op mentioned body builders at the gym squeezing newbs scrawny wrists and the body builders going around squeezing each other's wrists. Clearly this does happen in real life, the op has seen it first hand, if the op has seen it than it must not be an isolated incident and surely happens world wide. Plus everyone knows that when guys want to measure strength at the gym they squeeze each other's wrists. Or do you think they'll just see who can lift the most weights? c'mon guys, do you even lift bro? Wrist squeezing is a reality! The op said so!


----------



## RTKDCMB

Squeezing - no, unless you have the strength of an android. Bending and twisting in a way (or to an extreme) it is not meant to go - yes.


----------



## Dirty Dog

Mephisto said:


> You guys saying this is just fantasy from movies clearly didn't read the part where the op mentioned body builders at the gym squeezing newbs scrawny wrists and the body builders going around squeezing each other's wrists. Clearly this does happen in real life, the op has seen it first hand, if the op has seen it than it must not be an isolated incident and surely happens world wide. Plus everyone knows that when guys want to measure strength at the gym they squeeze each other's wrists. Or do you think they'll just see who can lift the most weights? c'mon guys, do you even lift bro? Wrist squeezing is a reality! The op said so!



I can honestly say I've never seen anybody with a wrist fracture from being squeezed by another persons hand. Not even once. 
Is it possible? I suppose, if we assume some ridiculously unlikely level of grip strength on the part of person A, and maybe a bit of osteoporosis on the part of person B. 
Frankly, if the OP claimed to have seen this in real life (he did not), I'd be raising the BS flag as high as I did when Zenjael proclaimed his ability to continue fighting despite a flail chest.
In short, while lots of things are theoretically possible, this sort of injury is ridiculously unlikely between two people of normal strength and health.


----------



## Mephisto

Dirty Dog said:


> I can honestly say I've never seen anybody with a wrist fracture from being squeezed by another persons hand. Not even once.
> Is it possible? I suppose, if we assume some ridiculously unlikely level of grip strength on the part of person A, and maybe a bit of osteoporosis on the part of person B.
> Frankly, if the OP claimed to have seen this in real life (he did not), I'd be raising the BS flag as high as I did when Zenjael proclaimed his ability to continue fighting despite a flail chest.
> In short, while lots of things are theoretically possible, this sort of injury is ridiculously unlikely between two people of normal strength and health.


Re-read the op, he explicitly claimed to have witnessed wrist squeezing at the gym. Of course it's probably bs.


----------



## Dirty Dog

Mephisto said:


> Re-read the op, he explicitly claimed to have witnessed wrist squeezing at the gym. Of course it's probably bs.





> I already seen too many people attempt to copy the movies in real life brawls or some people attempt to show of their strength by letting others squeeze their wrist area and in the former I have yet to see anyone get their wrists so broken that their hands are flipping down like they were shaped like weapons.



He says he's seen people grab wrists. He doesn't claim to have seen wrists broken, although "so broken" could be considered ambiguous.

I'll say again, then. If the OP is claiming to have seen wrists of normal people broken by normal people simply by squeezing, he is full of ****.


----------



## Mephisto

Dirty Dog said:


> He says he's seen people grab wrists. He doesn't claim to have seen wrists broken, although "so broken" could be considered ambiguous.
> 
> I'll say again, then. If the OP is claiming to have seen wrists of normal people broken by normal people simply by squeezing, he is full of ****.


Yeah I didn't say he'd claimed it. I question that he's even seen guys wrist squeezing, it seems highly unlikely. The op speaks like someone who's never even been to a gym.


----------



## Touch Of Death

Spinedoc said:


> It would take an insane amount of strength and I say that as someone who is much stronger than average. That being said, Ueshiba Morihei, the founder of Aikido, reportedly (according to his students) had some kind of freakishly, almost mutant like strength with grabbing, and his students would often feel "popping" (likely ligamentous) when he applied pressure and he would apparently squeeze so hard that it felt as though he was just going to crush the radius/ulna. All of his students would spend their off hours trying to strengthen their grasp so that they could duplicate it, but none of them could. It seems it was just something Ueshiba was born with.
> 
> Additionally, there is one current prisoner in the US federal prison system that can, and has broken bones simply by squeezing them (my ex-wife works in federal law enforcement for the prison system), in fact, he once broke another inmates ankle simply by squeezing it. He is also so freakishly strong that he is able to break handcuffs if they are put on him. When he is transported extra precautions, and the use of cast iron shackles with multiple thick chains are used. In fact, his strength was featured during a show on supermax prisons one night on Discovery Channel.
> 
> So is it possible…….yes. Could anyone simply train and do it? No way.


There are people walking around free that can rip quarters in half. That is scary just thinking about it. LOL


----------



## MJS

Mephisto said:


> You guys saying this is just fantasy from movies clearly didn't read the part where the op mentioned body builders at the gym squeezing newbs scrawny wrists and the body builders going around squeezing each other's wrists. Clearly this does happen in real life, the op has seen it first hand, if the op has seen it than it must not be an isolated incident and surely happens world wide. Plus everyone knows that when guys want to measure strength at the gym they squeeze each other's wrists. Or do you think they'll just see who can lift the most weights? c'mon guys, do you even lift bro? Wrist squeezing is a reality! The op said so!



Well, I never said that wrist grabbing doesn't happen.  I said that the odds of coming across someone being that strong, strong enough to simply grab your wrist and break it with grip strength alone, was few and far between.  If someone is stupid enough to let someone grab their wrist and grab, and they just stand there letting them do it, well......


----------



## shesulsa

I think it's gt a lot more to do with relative strength, angle, application. I can tell you I've trained with guys who worked in machine shops and steel workers. My own husband works at a sand and gravel processing plant - where they take boulders and make them into sand. When he grabs my wrist ... well ... I can feel the bones bend. No bullcrap. Hurts like heck. With some pressure on an angle? He could break my scrawy little wrist easily. But grabbing and crushing? I think it would take a rare individual with rare strength and STILL the advantage of some directional force.


----------



## RTKDCMB

shesulsa said:


> My own husband works at a sand and gravel processing plant - where they take boulders and make them into sand.


If he did that by crushing them in his bare hands I would be very impressed.


----------

