hey everyone dr jeff peng here wrist pain is extremely common and can be very easily
treated through a home exercise program so the goal of this video is to teach you an
exercise routine to help relieve the pain in your wrist let's get started
now if this is the first time you are watching one of my videos my goal is to help each and every one
of you live an active and healthy lifestyle so that's something you're interested in please
consider subscribing to my channel okay so what are the most common causes of wrist pain the
first is tendinitis or tendinopathy tendinitis is caused by an injury or trauma this results in
inflammation around a tendon and that leads to pain tendinopathy is an overused condition it's
caused by repetitive stress or overloading of a tendon and that leads to gradual wear and tear
both of these can be rather painful now the other common cause of pain in the wrist is a wrist
sprain there are a lot of very small ligaments in the wrist and ligaments help provide
stability to all the wrist bones any of these ligaments can get injured
when they're stretched or overloaded chronic loading of these ligaments can lead to instability
and pain so the goal of treatment is to first off load the area to allow the wrist time to recover
this will involve activity modification and oftentimes wearing a wrist brace now there are
two types of braces for the wrist one called a volar wrist brace and another called the
thumb spica splint if you have pain at or around the thumb you're probably going to want to get
the thumb spica splint because it's going to provide more support and more protection
otherwise the volar wrist brace is sufficient and depending on the injury i usually have my
patients wear their wrist brace for anywhere between one to two weeks to help protect the
wrist these braces are readily available at any pharmacy or online at amazon you're going
to want to wear the wrist brace throughout the day as well as at night when you sleep
now once the wrist starts to feel better then it's very important to get on an exercise program to
help strengthen the muscles and tendons around the wrist this helps the wrist recover further
and it allows your body to withstand the loads you are putting through it okay so this is just
one example of an exercise program for the wrist now you're always going to want to start off with
a warm-up just to get things loose so rest your forearm either on a table or in a chair and just
work on flexion and extension you just have to do this for 10 times so just like this so 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10. then work on clockwise for five times one two three four five counterclockwise one two
three four five okay now we're going to move on into some strengthening exercises and the first
exercise we're going to work on is wrist extension so i have a light dumbbell here you're going to
want to rest your forearm on on some type of support and what you're doing is we're going to
first do our first set of ten and the goal is to do three sets of ten so you just wanna rest your
forearm down and then just extend your wrist just like that so two three four five 6 7 8 9
10. now when you are first injured you may not be able to tolerate heavier weights or even a water
bottle and you may need to just first start off using no weight at all and just to get that range
of motion back but eventually as you get stronger start to use a little bit heavier weights again
water bottle can a soup maybe a two pound dumbbell and then progress remember three sets of ten
okay so the next exercise we're gonna work on is wrist flexion and again we wanna do three sets of
ten or at least build yourself up to three sets of ten so again rest your forearm on a table have
the wrist dropping off and then just rotate the wrist up just like that so drop your wrist down
and then rotate it up and we'll do our first set of ten so three four five six 7 8 9
10. remember the goal is to get up to three sets of 10. okay so the next thing we're going to work
on is grip strengthening now because we immobilize our wrist and after an injury you tend to get a
lot of muscle atrophy and so the goal of this is to rebuild strength in all of those small hand
muscles so get a stress ball or a towel crumple it up into a ball or just hang on to a dumbbell
and just squeeze and what i want you to do is squeeze for five seconds so one two three four
five and then relax rest for two three seconds and then squeeze one two three four five relax squeeze
again one two three four five and do this for a total of ten times okay so the next thing we're
going to do is to work on some simple stretches for the wrist and this is really important to
help improve range of motion and mobility so what i want you to do is to fully extend your elbow
over here drop your wrist down use your other hand and then pull back and where you're going to feel
this in the back part of your wrist as well it's all along the extensor compartment of your forearm
the goal is to hold this for 30 seconds initially and then slowly build yourself all the way up to
one minute so the other thing we want to do is we also want to work on the flexor compartment of the
wrist what you want to do is to fully extend your elbow this time bring your wrist up use your other
hand and then pull backwards and where you're going to feel it is in the bottom part of your
wrist as well as the flexor compartment of your forearm just like the extensor side we want to
first start with 30 seconds and then slowly build it up to one minute this simple exercise program
is meant to be done daily to help rehabilitate the wrist you can also check out this next video
where i talk about various other options to help treat muscle and joint pain thanks for watching