♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet. ♪
- Hi, folks. I'm Bob Schrupp, Physical Therapist.
- Brad Heineck, Physical Therapist.
- Together, we are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- 10 best wrist strengthening exercises
that you can do at home.
- Right. And for wrist strengthening,
after you've broken a wrist,
or sprained your wrist, or are recovering from a stroke,
there's a lot of things
that you really need to get that wrist strength back for.
- Oh, I would say beyond even that, Brad.
If you wanna be better at your athletic sport,
there's so many sports golf, tennis,
baseball, softball,
I mean, the wrist and the forearm strength
is so critical in these sports.
- Yeah. And actually you think about it,
the wrist strength to the hand strength
is similar to the core strength to the arm
and the leg strength, kind of.
Could you say that?
- Yep. Sure. - Exactly.
- And what I have just read, Brad,
I just read this recently
is that if you wanna make the biggest gains in weightlifting
you should strengthen two things.
One, you strengthen your grip,
and, two, strengthen your core.
- Sure. That makes sense. - Yeah.
- Now, I'm gonna relate these mostly to things
that you can do at home.
You don't have to go buy a lot of expensive equipment
or go to the gym to get some fancy risk strength-
- Show us how to make things.
- Right. And things that you already have at home,
and for virtually no cost,
and you will get excellent functional strength.
So should we carry on?
- Well, first I see a couple new people out there, Brad.
- Two of them. Good. - Two.
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- Let's get on with it.
Okay. First thing I wanna go through is just,
make sure you have full range of motion with your wrist.
If it's out of a cast
and it's been in for a while, do some stretching.
We have some nice videos on how to stretch it.
But make sure you got good range of motion,
if you already have that.
We're gonna start out with just...
If you got some dumbbells on-
- And you may wanna get it disapproved
by the way, by your doctor,
I mean, if you are after surgery.
- Right, exactly. Make sure that there's no restrictions
preventing this from causing problems.
So if you take a dumbbell
and you just hold it in your hand here.
Now, on the edge of a table is a nice place to do this,
because we wanna isolate.
We don't wanna get the whole arm moving,
just the wrist. - We wanna focus on the wrist.
- Yep. So if we do this...
You know, let me get the green one,
so we have a better contrast.
And all that I'm gonna do is wrist flexion.
So here, and actually you can roll the fingers
out a little bit so that works the grip a little bit
as well as the wrist.
And we're just gonna do wrist flexion.
Obviously, the lighter the weight.
And if you're starting out,
you wanna be able to do 10 to 15 of them.
By the time you get to that 10th or that 15 one,
it's getting tired.
- You could maybe use a soup can on that,
couldn't you be, Brad? - You bet. Yep.
- We get as much rolling on the finger, but you'd get...
And that's a pound, and that will be a good way to start.
- Yeah. Which would be good,
particularly for people after surgery or a stroke.
Okay. And then you simply wanna get the opposite
muscle group palm down versus palm up.
And this one, you'll notice that this way
is typically much weaker for the majority of people,
if not all people.
- And this is a critical motion for strength,
for grip strength.
Because in order to grip something,
you may not notice this or know this,
but when you grip something,
your wrist first goes up like this and then you grip.
- Sure. - So if you can't
get that motion, and if it's not strong,
you won't grip very well.
- Right. My wrist is getting tired already, Bob.
- Isn't that amazing, 'cause what is that?
Three pounds? - Three pounds. Right.
- But like you said, once you isolate,
it really starts making these smaller muscles
really aren't that big unless you're Popeye.
- Exactly. Popeye.
You don't need a table, you can do it right on your...
Use your leg for a table as well.
Here, here. And then I always like to do radial deviation.
If you look at it from this angle,
like your thumbs going up,
and we go up like that.
- Brad, how many reps do you want people to try here?
- Again, 10 to 15.
- Oh, did you say that already?
- Yeah, I think so, Bob, but don't worry about it.
- I don't listen to you.
This says I don't focus.
- That's what you can do with the dumbbell.
That's a real nice, simple exercise.
It's very effective.
Now, we can go onto a little further.
And if you don't have dumbbells
but you do happen to have a stretch band,
particularly these with the handles, this works really well.
The way I like to do it is I'll double it up,
put it through one foot, take the other foot,
step over the top of it like that.
- You got that Lonnie?
- You got that?
Okay. Now, the nice thing about having two
is you can change the resistance very easily,
just by going with one hand.
Let me get my resistance there,
and I can go like this.
And I could go off the table with this,
or my knee and flip it over.
Now what I would do is I would use both of them on this way,
because I'm much stronger with flexion.
But if I turn it over and do palm down extension,
much harder. It's way too much.
- Just funny, I've done these exercises before.
And you're right, I start with ulnar deviation,
radial deviation.
And I finish with this one,
and this one always fatigues so quickly.
And that's the one that really pumps up my forearm.
- Yeah. Boy, I'm getting tired already.
And then this one,
you can do some radial deviation as well, like this.
Now, if you wanna get ulnar deviation,
which is that direction, which isn't a real common thing
that people are looking for, you can use this.
You wrap it around the back of your arm and go like this.
It's kinda... There we go.
- Oh, you're getting it, right?
- Yep. There we go.
And that might be a good one for golf, perhaps, Bob.
- Right. - Right. Yep.
- Exactly right, 'cause you're going like that,
like quite often. - Bob's the golfer.
I'm not familiar with that sport.
Okay. Now the other one, if we got people out there
that are working in industry
or if you're a construction worker,
really working with your hands,
this is a great thing to use.
Get a gallon of-
- What the heck you got there, Brad?
- One gallon jug of milk.
- Okay. - Empty the milk,
put some water in it for weight.
- Sure. Depending on how much you wanna work.
- Get some rope, some twine, whatever,
from the hardware store for $8.19 a foot,
or you may have some laying around the house.
PVC pipe, this is two inch diameter.
You can use one inch, one and a half.
Two inch seems to work really well.
Anything close to that is fine.
And drill a hole right in the middle of it.
Then you're gonna take that rope
and thread it through the hole.
Get it out the bottom like this.
There we go.
And simply tie in there.
- Nice. - And there we go.
Now, you're gonna wonder what are we gonna do with this?
- Well- - This is work.
This is a little more advanced, wouldn't you say, Brad?
- Yeah. I'm gonna lift,
and you could vary the weight
by how much water you put in the jug,
up like this.
And then back down.
This actually works concentric
and eccentrically on the wrist muscles
which is a wonderful weight to strengthen. Okay?
Now, if you look at it from the side, there you go.
And you may wanna bring it in closer to your body,
'cause my shoulders are getting pretty tired out there.
Elbows in.
- Again, you wanna isolate more just wrist-
- Yeah, exactly.
- Otherwise you're working the shoulder.
- And you could do this, if you have a taller table.
Oops. Excuse me.
Hope, no one got hurt back there.
And then you can do it this way.
Up this way, and back down this way.
But if your shoulders are strong, this is fine.
- And then you can flip, right?
- Yep. Flip this way as well. Palms down.
- And then, Brad, you were showing
even the little ulnar deviation.
- Yeah. If you got the larger diameter pipe,
you can do like this.
Make sure you don't have any sharps edges here.
But this PVC is really easy to sand off and smoothen.
There we go. Look at that.
- Do you mind if I feel it once.
- Oh, you... gosh.
Enjoy, Bob.
- Yeah. Pretty lightweight right now.
- Yeah. I just, I only have about a few ounces of water in
'cause I didn't wanna kill it.
- Although, again, it's funny,
you just go down once or twice,
and I'm already starting to feel it now.
I was thinking this is pretty easy.
- Yeah.
- But again, your shoulders get tired too.
- So this is a simple, this costs very little.
If you happen to have some of this laying around
and even if you don't, you can-
- Yeah, buy that. - PVC pipe very cheap.
For two or $3 for 10 feet of it.
Then what are you gonna do with the other eight feet?
Okay. Now, this is one,
works really well for someone that works in the trades.
But I use this for anybody.
- Right. Exactly.
- Yep. You take a hammer, even just a little hammer
that you use for nailing nails in the wall at home,
and we're gonna work pronation and supination,
which we haven't covered yet.
- That's the forearm now this yeah.
- Right. The forearm, it's to the wrist,
so it's all connected, it's part of whole group.
- This is another one that's actually
would be good for golf, Brad.
- Sure. You bet.
- Because you're pronating when you-
- But functionally, opening a doorknob.
And if your recovering hand is really weak,
you're gonna take the hammer,
grab it here so there isn't much there,
and just work it.
- So you're further up the handle, basically.
- Yep. And as you get stronger,
you simply move it up this way.
And for stretching, the weight of handle right now
is giving my wrist a little stretch as well.
- And that's how we used.
I've used it before with a patient
that was lacking pronation and supination,
and we just have 'em bring it over
and they can let it stretch a bit.
I'm sorry, better get it out of you.
- That's a one pound hammer there.
When you get stronger, you simply go to the bigger hammer.
Again, you're gonna start like this, this is a two pounder,
and you simply go up.
Now, this is getting pretty heavy.
I'm not gonna use a hammer like this with someone
that's 80 years old, but I would with that one. Okay?
But then in the other hand,
we got people from the other end of the spectrum,
we got people that are 250 pounds and real strong
and they're gonna get to this.
- So you could do a little wrist on this too
contour like this. - Oh, good point.
Little ulnar deviation, which would be really functional
for people who are working in this way.
- But it's actually going up into radial.
- Sure.
- It's strengthening into radial.
- Exactly. That's a good point, Bob.
And again, repetitions, 10 to 15 reps.
Get a bigger hammer.
Now, there's gonna be people out there
that are strong like bull, Bob,
and we really gotta accommodate everyone.
So naturally, the next thing we do-
- It's hammer time.
- We go to the 12 pound sledge hammer.
Now, actually, there are people that could use this.
- Is that a 12 ponder?
- Yeah. It's either 10 or 12, I don't know.
I've had it for a number of years, I kind of forgot.
But again, here, this is not that hard to do
as we go up in here. Okay?
And then I could do the radial deviation as well.
If I had a big strong patient,
I wouldn't hesitate using this.
Now, when we talk about strong, like bull,
this is getting really difficult.
And you can see, I just moved about six inches.
And when you get the rule-
- Go on, Brad, put it to the air.
- Yeah. Put it to the air.
We'll just hold this kind of a deal.
So be careful with that.
Don't even mess with that, stick with the small hammer.
- We don't wanna anybody getting hurt here.
- All right. - Well, thanks, Brad.
Remember, we can fix just about anything.
- I'm feeling strong. Oh, but a broken heart.
- Yeah. But we're working on it.
All right. Thanks a lot.