In this video, I'll be giving you my honest physical therapist opinion about using a
hand grip strengthener. For elbow, wrist and hand problems. This is especially important for you if
you're suffering from problems like tennis elbow golfer's elbow, carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis
in your hand, or tendinitis anywhere in those same areas. First, let me tell you about the features
of this. So it's made out of a very hard plastic, and it's covered in this rubber coating right here
where your hands would go around the the handles right here, then it's got this spring. And this is
a very tight, pretty fixed spring. And so it's got a lot of resistance. Whenever you squeeze a device
right here, the hinge moves, and it puts pressure tension through the spring. Now the spring is
attached to a screw that's within this part of the handle. And that screw can be turned with this
knob. And there's a little plus or minus sign, it's hard to see because it's the same color.
But you can see it if you are in person there. And when you turn it to the plus side, which
is clockwise. In this case, it moves the spring further out towards the 60 kilogram side and it
moves the spring further in towards the five, the 10 kilogram side, or five kilogram side, whenever
you turn it all the way, in the other way. So it adds and removes tension, making the handle
easier or more difficult to squeeze together. Now obviously, this goes from five kilograms to 60
kilograms, which works out to about 10 pounds to about 130 pounds. Now let me tell you how to use
this grip strengthener. Now most people will tell you to just repeatedly squeeze it like
this. But I think that that's inappropriate, there's a much better way to do it. And it's
because of the way our hands designed. How many things do you do throughout the day and talking
on a general scale, not specific things. But on a general scale. Most things you do throughout
the day are not repetitive squeezing, most things you grip onto and you hold it for several seconds,
if not maybe even longer. As you're moving it around. Think of like cooking, or doing yard
work. Think of doing chores around the house, you grip onto that broomstick and you're sweeping, or
you're mopping your grip onto that pot handle. And for a few seconds, you might be moving it around,
our hands are designed to grip and hold things. So why not strengthen it that way, grip and hold
rather than repeated, gripping Lego. This is just not a practical movement. Now what I recommend
doing is holding for 10 seconds. And if you think about it, you're not really strengthening. If you
can bring the handles together. I mean, you're using some muscle effort to do to do this. But
you can go more if the handles are able to come together. So you've got to adjust the tension,
so that it makes your grip struggle so that you can't bring the handles together. Because then
you're not really strengthening beyond what your current strength level is. So I'm going to move
this all the way out because for me, that's where I need to be to be in the hundreds zone. And when
you have difficulty and you're shaking a bit to bring those handles together, now you're at the
right tension. And there's another reason for a holding whenever you're doing grip strengthening,
there's an idea called muscle technique. Many people think of muscle technique as Lockjaw,
and it's along the same lines, except there's a normal muscle tetany that all our muscles
can achieve. And all this means is that there's a constant signal from the nerves in the head that
connect to the muscles that you're using. And the more signals reach the muscle that you're using,
the more cells or the more fibers within that muscle are going to be activated to be used. This
creates for a more efficient muscle contraction, because theoretically, in muscles that are weak or
just aren't used very frequently, some of those muscle fibers kind of shut down, they hibernate
a bit, the body's very efficient. So it likes to say, well, if I'm not going to be used, I'm going
to shrink wither away, just kind of hibernate be inactive. This happens to a lot of people in their
muscles, and you're able to compensate with other muscles only use the ones that you're used to
using. And you might not be using those deeper muscles that need to be used in order to get
the right balances around your joints. So doing those holes with significant resistance is really
important to activate that technique feature that I'm talking about in your body so that you can get
the muscles to work to their full potential and you're strengthening them all together rather than
just the strongest muscles. Now one more thing to note here is that when ever you're gripping
the handle curvature here, it curves out this way. So your pinky has to really reach out depending on
the size of your hand. Of course, in order to grip down. If you have a weakness on the outer
part of your hand, which is very possible. You can accommodate that weakness by flipping the handle
upside down like this. Now this might allow you to reach your pinky around better. Another thing
that you can do is flip it backwards because that might be easier for you to hold on to. You
can also Hold it right side up, but backwards. And maybe that's a little bit easier for you, I always
tell my clients that I have working with the grip strengthener, to play with the position to focus
on the weakest part of your grip. And because we use our hands so much, I think it's important for
you to frequently do exercise with this. So I tell my patients to hold this for 10 seconds at a time
whenever you're doing a grip strength exercise, and repeat it 10 times in a row, and then do this
hourly throughout the day until you get your problem resolved. As long as there's no pain
that's increasing from doing this, it should be good for you to keep going and keep strengthening
throughout the day. Now, let me tell you about the pros of this. I love the design, it's so sleek,
it's so simple, the old grip strengtheners that I used to use, you had to get them with certain
resistance and they were fixed, it was a 10 pound one or a 20 pound 130 40 and 50 and so forth,
and you had to have a set of them. This takes away the set, you can adjust this and get it to
the right size. Now I have seen some that are in pounds rather than in kilograms. For me,
it doesn't really matter, I just put it to the setting that I needed that based on how I feel I
will need to track a specific number. So those are my favorite pros about this is that it's
adjustable. And it's super lightweight, and you'll need one. Now the cons there aren't really many,
if anything, I would love to see a design that doesn't offer the angled handles right here,
I'd love to see parallel handles, because that's kind of how our grip is supposed to be,
I get it that there's a hinge here in the spring, the design of this, it just kind of needs to be in
this angled position. But ultimately, when you get it down right here, they're more parallel. So I'd
love to see a parallel device developed. I don't know how popular it would be either, because I'm
probably one of the few people thinking of things in these terms. Not many people think about this.
But this is still effective, I wouldn't say that it's a deal breaker and plus, you're you're gonna
have a hard time finding some parallel device. By the way, if you know of one,
please drop it in the comment, link it in the comment so that I can find it because I'd love
to be able to get one. Let me give you my honest physical therapist opinion about these groups.
strengtheners I think they're highly, highly, highly underutilized. They're so practical,
they're overlooked all the time, people think of all the big weights that make you look aesthetic,
you know, that make you look big, and the obvious muscle groups that are worked out like the biceps
or the leg muscles, you know, we're talking upper body, people even think about their four muscles,
which this does strengthen, but what isn't talked about a lot is the strength of the palm muscles.
And that's extremely important for fixing problems like carpal tunnel, arthritis of the hand, even
elbow pain can be affected by the hand strength. And so if you strengthen your hands properly,
then you're going to get so much better and have a better quality of life. One of the things that I
look at in my patients that come in with problems anywhere from the elbow down to the fingers,
is what the meat of their palms look like. So I'm looking at this side of the palm for sure
the meat thickness, the thickness of the muscles here in the palm, but also in the back of the hand
between the bones of the hand, if there's a big intention right here, and it looks like you can
see all their bones very easily, there isn't much meat, especially when they clench their fists like
that you can see my my muscles pop out in the back of my hands right here. If you have a big
indention here, as is associated in people as they get older than that's a sign that the muscles that
are between the bones right there have just gotten weaker and weaker, and those are the palm muscles.
And those do get stronger. If you strengthen your grip appropriately with the grip strength center,
you've got to adjust the position slightly so that you close the gripper a bit and get it
right here on this part of your palm because if it's outer fingers over here, then you're
going to strengthen more of the forearm muscles. But if you can get that grip strengthener down
as close into your palm as possible, and then think about shutting your palm closed,
kind of like you're doing this motion right here, then you can really strengthen those palm muscles.
And that helps with things like thumb, arthritis, trigger finger, so many other problems. These come
in at under 10 bucks, you can even get a pair for under 10 bucks. Sometimes they're on sale,
you can get higher end ones that are made out of metal for a little bit more. There's a variety of
different colors and shapes and the springs come in different colors. There's so much out there but
this is your basic one that you're probably going to find everywhere. I put a link to getting a
pair of these from Amazon, it's in the description below. Go check that out. If you want to get one,
I highly recommend getting the pair or maybe even multiples because you want to keep them where it's
convenient to use them. Like it's your favorite chair, maybe at your office or at your desk,
space, your workspace wherever you you work. I have seen people take these in
their purse or in their bag when they travel some keep these in the car as well. It's got
to be sure to be safe while you're driving. If you've ever suffered from any sort of elbow,
wrist or hand problem, like I mentioned in this video, highly worth it. Just get yourself one of
these now and start working on your grip strength on a consistent basis so that you're not running
into worse problems later in life. Hey, if you thought this video was helpful Please hit the like
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We post each and every week. Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you in the next video. Bye bye