Studies have shown you can continue to build muscle with around 30% of your one rep max, some have gone as low as 20%. The main issue is getting to the 5 “money” reps within the threshold of failure. The set is more likely to be called quits on due to other issues before true muscle fatigue, this includes lots of the things on the mental and physical spectrum.
In all honesty though, higher volume is often more difficult to recover from and depending on your wrist situation you are probably way better off just taking a couple weeks off from anything that aggravates it and letting it heal fully. Or at least drop the intensity a lot. In your situation I’d probably drop the weight down to just 50% with the same amount of reps and aim to work that strength back up over the next 2-4 weeks, slowly, without pushing myself - whatever it takes. Maybe the reason it’s still aggravating you is you keep trying things to continue to build muscle when you should just let it heal.
I think up to 30 reps you will be fine. At least for a while. You might actually gain more because of new different type of stimulus. You can also shorten rest times, play with pre-exhaustion etc. This can be a fun time to do things in a different way. You definetly wont be losing anything.
I doubt keeping the training volume exactly the same is key. But the logic is sound. The weight itself is only one of the important factors in the “muscle growth formula”.
What you need is to make the muscle work hard. And then over time make it work harder. Whilst eating good food.
For anyone doubting this: Try Poundstone curls for 3 months. 1 giant set to 100 reps with an empty bar. If you get there add a bit. Like a tiny amount. And go again. This ultra high rep work is good for you. and if you have not done it before will stimulate new growth.
Respectfully, I think these are all band-aids that just make your wrist not hurt as much. I would seriously consider looking into actually fixing whatever is wrong with your wrist, which is likely Dorsal Wrist Impingement.
Time off from the gym is one of the best ways to prevent injury. You must be either trying to go back in pushing yourself too hard, or you train so hard so often never taking a deload that when you finally do take a week off your body reacts in such a way that everything gets tight because you’ve so far exceeded its ability to recover. My shoulder always used to flare up in a deload week which always confused me until I realized my body was actually telling me that I was overstimulating it. The act of training kept getting blood and nutrients to the muscle to help with pain relief but it was never able to fully recover or heal fully.
This is why it is important to lower the weights you’re using to something completely pain-free and not aggravating in any way whilst also slowly building back up to where it was before. You can try torush your gains and end up with a serious wrist injury (or maybe as suggested above already have an impingement) putting you out for months or you can play the longevity game and keep this up for longer. Don’t be like one of those guys who bench through their shoulder pain or tendonitis who after a while disappear.
Ty. I think my main problem is my tendons can’t catch up with my muscle development since I was kind of late to start working out seriously and I am on trt for like 8 months now
My daily life is also extremely static since I am a software engineer
i will test half weight thing and see if it will recover. thanks for reply