- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together we are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Let's bring this court to order.
All right. Today we're gonna talk about hand,
wrist, and forearm strengthening, Brad.
- Sure.
- And this may be after you've had a cast on it.
It's been removed and you want to start some strengthening.
Or maybe it's after surgery,
or maybe you just want to get stronger.
- Sure.
- Maybe for some reason it's gotten weaker.
So let's go ahead and start off.
We've got a number of them that you can try here.
You can get just a little hand weight.
You're gonna probably wanna start with,
you know, especially if it's very weak,
you're gonna start off with just maybe a pound or two.
- Yeah.
- Yeah. A pound.
This one's three pounds.
So let's go ahead and start off with
what you're gonna do is wrist extension.
You're gonna grab the weight like this,
and you're gonna put it off the edge of the table,
and you're just gonna work on starting from the
low position here.
And Brad's got the angle.
Can you see that one too?
So we got them both going here.
And, again, this is one of those things
that doesn't look like much,
but I'd go a little bit slower, Brad.
But after a while, it's you start to feel it.
- And you notice we're using the table for support,
and you want to have the wrist just over the edge.
If it's over here, you're not isolating as well.
And it's more comfortable this way.
- And if you did have a cast on
and you did or did have surgery,
you're gonna want to start this very slow
and under the guidance of your therapy before.
- Sure.
- But this is wrist extension, to start off with that one.
All right. Let's start off with,
then you can also turn it to the side like this, Brad.
And you're basically doing radial deviation, right?
- Right. It's like your thumb is going up.
- Yeah.
- And that's getting some of these muscles,
the smaller muscles that you don't use quite as much
as with extension or flection, but it's important.
- Now you can flip right over this way,
and we're gonna do flexion, wrist flection.
- Palm up.
- Palm up. Yep.
- All the way down, all the way up.
- How many repetitions, Brad, would you say?
This is gonna vary a lot depending on where you are
in your rehab.
- Right.
- You can do a lot of these, wouldn't you say?
I'd say even 20 to 30 if you're later in the rehab process.
- Sure.
- All right. Next one.
While we're at it, let's do a finger one, Brad.
- Oh, yeah.
- Let's roll it down like this,
and then roll it back up again.
Roll it down, roll it back up.
- Yeah. You get a little more of a
nice little stretch there too.
- Yep.
- Just if you drop it, make sure something's down there
so it doesn't get, there's nothing that'll get hurt
like your toe.
(Laughs) I'm killing me. But I'm killing myself.
- Yeah. You're such a funny guy. I can't believe it.
All right.
Now we're gonna have to move over to some of the more
handmade strengthening objects.
And we're gonna go ahead and use it.
It's just an everyday, useful hammer, right, Brad?
- Yeah. This is a really nice device for this.
- It's hammer time.
- Yeah. - All right.
So this is gonna work forearm pronation and supination.
So basically you're gonna go off the table here,
and you're gonna work it this way.
- Yeah.
- And then you're gonna work it this way.
- This part of the arm must be stationary to the table
so you get the range of motion in the right joints.
Now, if this is, if you're weak,
you're gonna start, loosen up your grip, Bob.
- There. - Oh, yeah. Start up higher.
- Yeah. - Good point.
- And that's much easier.
So you can vary the resistance just by where you grab it.
Now, I don't know how many ounces hammer this.
Is that a 16 ounce or 20 ounce?
- I think this is only 16.
- Okay. But naturally you can go to a bigger,
you know, hammer or even a little,
- You could even put a weight around the end of it
and make it a little harder yet.
- Yeah. It depends what you got in the toolbox.
And if you're one of those big poppy arms,
you might have to get a sledgehammer,
a big 12-pound sledge hammer going back and forth.
- Next thing here, we actually just a handmade device here.
It's a great one for wrist and forearm strengthening
and a little bit of hand too, even.
You just take a dowel, and Brad and I were talking about,
you know, if you have a dowel with different thickness,
it's gonna be different, you know, in difficulty.
- The diameter.
- So basically you're just gonna attach a rope to it.
And I'm gonna go ahead and stand up here.
- Yeah. Go ahead and stand up, Bob.
- So you're gonna roll it up.
- This one is a lot harder than it looks.
- Yep. And then you're gonna roll it down.
- And this is a real functional motion.
I think this is more effective.
That's gonna help your daily living activities
with your hand and wrist than the other ones we had shown.
- Basically, too, you don't wanna have your arms
up like this.
You wanna be down like this.
- Sure. Yep.
- I was just holding it up so you could see it,
but you you're gonna want to be.
And my arms are starting to fatigue.
- Oh, yeah.
- And this is a one-pound weight,
and you can obviously add weight to it.
- Right.
- To make it more difficult.
- One, we do have a video on this where you can take
a half a gallon or a gallon milk jug
and vary the weight by how much water you put in it.
- Yeah. And that's a,
that would be a great one for progressing yourself.
- Yeah. Just you should drink the milk first, though.
- That's a good point.
'Cause it would get a little nasty after a while.
- Yeah. So this is a one-inch diameter.
If you had an inch and a half or two inch,
it would just make it a little bit easier to work with, so.
- I do. I feel the burn, Brad.
- Oh, yeah. - So. All right.
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