Tapered Wrist Roller Q&A

The wrist roller, a straight piece of wooden dowel, has been touted as one of "the" grip developers of all time. Simply tie the rope to a weight, hold the wrist roller out in front of you at arms' length, and "roll up" the rope and weight by alternate movements of each hand.

In order to achieve maximum leverage (and develop maximum strength in the forearms, wrists, and hands) the hands should project out straight from the wrists. The only way this is going to happen is if you put your arms straight out from the shoulders and grasp the wrist roller at shoulder width. You could do this with a straight wrist roller if it were an extremely long wrist roller. I.e., somewhere in the neighborhood of two and a half feet. No one makes one that long and the use of such a device would be extremely awkward

Conventional wrist rollers are much shorter and easier to handle. The problem is that these shorter wrist rollers are all straight. There is no taper to any of them. The problem this creates is that, while your arms have to be positioned closer together to hold a straight wrist roller, your arms are in towards each other, the wrists have to bend so that your hands are turned out.

This isn't the way the wrists and hands were designed to operate.

The tapered wrist roller eliminates this problem. For the top of the forearm, roll the wrist roller toward you (at the top) as you pull the weight up. For the bottom of the forearm, roll the wrist roller away from you as you pull the weight up.