In this video, I'm going to show you how to instantly
improve circulation and blood flow in your hands and fingers.
Stay tuned.
Hey, everyone. Dr. Rowe coming to you from SpineCare in Saint
Joseph, Michigan. In this video, we're going to go over
three easy exercises that can quickly improve circulation and
blood flow in our hands and fingers. A note about these
exercises, each one works just a little bit differently to get
the best results. Go through them all. Use what works best
for you. As a bonus, all of the exercises can be done at home
require no special equipment and you may find improve
circulation even within 30 seconds. So, with that being
said, let's get started. So, here's a really easy exercise
that you can do daily to instantly improve blood flow
and circulation in your hands and fingers. Great part is this
one works really well for aches and pains due to hand arthritis
or just from typing or cellphone use. So, I'm going to
go through a couple different motions. Each one we're going
to do for five repetitions. So, remember with all of these
movements, try to do them for five repetitions. First thing
that you're going to do is put your hands out in front of you
like this, fingers up towards the ceiling. What we're going
to do is put our together like this and then slowly curl the
tips of our fingers downward towards the top of our palm
really focusing on moving through our knuckles what you
want to do is press into your palm gently to activate those
muscles I pretty much feel it in my fingers going down into
my palm you're going to relax after a brief second and then
repeat this five times the second part what we're going to
do is reach a little bit further now and go towards the
middle of our palm so really focus on curling those fingers
trying to reach towards your palm times and then, the last
movement is really reaching down going towards the bottom
of the palm towards the wrist. With this one too, you're
probably going to notice that one side might go down a little
bit further than the other especially if you do have
arthritis. So, you might want to try to do this in front of a
mirror and see if you have some imbalances. If that's the case,
really try to work on that as much as you can to open up
those fingers and hopefully get some more movement out of those
joints. So, what we're going to do next is now focus a little
bit more our thumbs pretty straight forward we're just
going to press our thumbs towards the side of our index
finger just kind of clamp down a little bit hold that for a
brief second for five times then we're going to take our
thumb and reach towards the middle of our palm really
focusing on trying to reach as far as we can activate those
muscles around the thumb brief second for a hold five times
and then we're going to do a circular motion like this
doesn't matter what direction you go because we're going to
do for five times and then switch it up and go in reverse
to repeat five more times. So now let's focus a little bit
more on coordination. So this one right here is going to be a
finger pinch. I'm going to take my index finger right here and
just pinch it towards my thumb. This one again might take a
little bit more coordination. So if you don't feel like you
have the greatest coordination over time you should probably
you know see that improve. But just kind of press in there.
Hold that for a brief second. Release it and do that five
times and then just switch it over to the middle finger. To
make this one harder you can do is alternate them just like
this so give yourself a challenge and give that one a
try so now what we're going to do is move on to making a fist
so I really want to focus on just curling my fingers down
and clamping down right towards my palm really make a fist
right here engage those muscles and then bring my thumb across
like this and just squeeze as much as I can for a brief
second and then open up my fingers spreading my fingers
and thumbs out as much as I can feeling that into the palm
holding that for a brief second and then just repeating that
whole cycle five times just like this. So, we're going to
finish with my favorite move which are called piano fingers.
So, we're just going to put our fingers out in front of us like
this and just mimic playing a keyboard or a piano for roughly
five seconds, release it, do that about five times but go
through all of these movements. You're probably going to notice
that one just helps you out a little bit more especially with
pain, tightness, or achiness and that point you can throw in
as many repetitions as you like until everything is nice and
loose so here's another easy way to quickly improve blood
flow and circulation into our hands and fingers this is going
to be a self massage that usually feels really really
good what we're going to need is a soft round object a tennis
ball works perfectly but you can also use something like a
lacrosse ball handball racquetball even a soft round
dog toy just take your ball and place it on a flat surface you
can use a table desk or countertop. Let's start by
focusing on our thumb. Just take the tip of your thumb,
press it into the ball to the point where it's going to cause
a good self massage and then just roll up and down like
this. You usually again feels really good. The ball is going
to do all of the hard work. I like to go over one spot
roughly about five seconds and then switch it up and just hit
a different spot. You want to explore as many areas around
the thumb as possible and as you do this exercise, you're
probably going to notice an this ball to run off from you
too that you're going to find that one spot just needs a
little bit more tension. Maybe it's really tight and achy. At
that point, stop over it and keep doing this over and over
again until it is nice and loose. From there, just move
into the palm and repeat. When it comes to the palm,
progressively press into it just a little bit more over
time to really dig into those muscles and then work into your
fingers starting with your index and then go all the way
down to the pinky finger. From there, I like to go over all
finger this and I also curl my fingers into the ball at the
same time. Again, what we're trying to do is go through as
many motions, movements, and positions as possible to
identify any spot that needs it just a little bit more. So,
really experiment with it as much as you can. From there,
we're going to go onto the backside of the hand. So, I'm
just going to cut the ball with my other hand right here and
then just work over the top, going over the thumb, going
over all the fingers right here and then the backside of the
hand towards the wrist. Again, focusing on any area the knees
it just a little bit more so after we're done with the hand
we're now going to move on to the wrist and the forearm it's
really important that we focus all the way up to the elbow
because we want all of this nice and loose so we can really
increase that circulation going down to our fingertips so let's
take our ball right here and place it right over the wrist
with our palms facing down and then do that massage go roughly
about five seconds over the middle and then work your way
towards the inside right here and then also towards the
outside and then just keep doing over and over again into
the forearm working your way all the way up to the elbow and
then what we want to do is go on the back side right here so
again just cup your ball right here and then just do this with
your hand focusing on any muscle that needs a little bit
more usually for me it's this muscle right here the
brachioradialis that gets really really tight but explore that
whole area again spend more time over any spot that needs
it just a little bit more so what I'd like to do to take
this one to the next level is add in a little bit more of a
strengthening exercise. This one is really good for grip
strength. So, let's take our ball and place it right on our
table. What I'm going to do is kind of like a pinching motion.
So, take your thumb and your index finger and pinch into the
ball as much as you can. Really challenging yourself in those
muscles to activate as much as they can. What you're going to
do is just lift the ball up like this and then hold it for
roughly five seconds. You're going to release it and then
you're going to move over towards your middle finger and
repeat all the way down to the pinky finger. As you do the
you're probably going to notice that one certain finger like me
for me it's my ring finger right here is just really
really weak or maybe there's just a lot of tightness or
achiness with that movement at that point treat it like your
weak link and throw more repetitions in but whatever you
do on one side always switch to the other and repeat just to
make sure to keep everything in balance so here's a really good
exercise that cannot only help improve circulation in our
hands and fingers but also help strengthen them this is no as
the rubber band method. We just need an ordinary rubber band.
One large enough that is going to fit across our hand
comfortably. To get into position, take your rubber band
and place it right above the top of the bottom knuckle. So,
it'll be a little bit easier to start off with. Let's close our
hand just like this. We're going to target the thumb
first. So, take your thumb and slowly take it out like this as
far as you can. Really fighting the resistance of that rubber
band. When you can't go any further, hold that for a brief
second and then bring it back fighting again the resistance
of that rubber band so we're going to fight it going out and
then also in I like to do this roughly for five repetitions in
both directions and with each repetition try to build into it
just a little bit more to take this one to the next level
instead of going straight out with it angle your thumb at
different positions so go down with it and then repeat you're
going to notice it hits the muscles just a little bit
differently so experiment with going all the way down you can
also take your thumb up if any of those positions really feel
like they're targeting a little bit more tightness weakness or
maybe even pain at that point throw more repetitions in so
next let's move over to our fingers so again our rubber
band is going to be right above that bottom knuckle for this
one we just want to open up our fingers as much as we can
really fighting that rubber band holding that for a brief
second and then closing it like this again fighting the
resistance do this five times in both direction so if this
feels like it's pretty easy and you want to take this one to
the next level just simply raise the rubber band up the
closer the rubber band gets to your fingertips the harder this
will be so with each repetition maybe try to raise it up just a
little bit until it's all the way up and again you probably
might find that this becomes a little bit too easy so what you
can do is use thicker rubber bands or just use more rubber
bands because obviously the more rubber bands we use the
more resistance but this is a great exercise that you can do
throughout the day and I hope that it gives you really great
results. If the exercises help, please support the channel by
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have any comments or questions, please leave them below. I'll
get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks for watching.