Hi, I'm Dr. Cohen. Today I want to talk to you about some simple ways that you can reduce the
likelihood of any kind of wrist injuries, such as carpal tunnel. All day long usually, what we do is
we're at a keyboard, we're typing, let me show you. We're typing, which includes flexion, and
we're also mousing, which is more of a movement like this, where we're going like this. If we
do go out into the world and play a sport, say tennis or golf, most of the time we're using the
gripping component of our hands. So, everything we need in the body has to do with balance. So,
all muscles need to be balanced out, that's why, stereotypically, the guy who goes to the gym and
just works on his pecs and his biceps usually ends up injuring himself, because you want to make sure
you work your back and your legs and that there's balance throughout the whole body. So today I'm
going to show you about a new device that just came out that helps work on the wrist extensors,
which are commonly overlooked in day to day life. So this new device is called the wrist extensor.
I call it "the claw," if any of you remember from "Liar Liar" where Jim Carrey is walking
around "ahhh it's the claw" because it really looks very strange when it's on your body. Um, but
basically you're gonna hook all your fingers to it and then work on extending the hand slowly,
and there's three motions that are really important with this. So this device like I said,
works on strengthening the extensor unit of the wrist. I found that because I was always doing
more and more rock climbing I found that there was some imbalance in the muscles in my forearm,
and then I started researching and came across this device and learned how effective it is,
and also how it would be useful in a variety of things and not just for rock climbing. So what
you do is you look all your fingers into each one of these finger grips, including the thumb. Yes
there's an extra one, we don't have six fingers, we haven't evolved that much, but that's for the
thumb when you use it on the other hand. And what you're going to want to do is extend and hold it
for about five seconds, and then slowly relax down and then do a little squeeze just to kind
of reset the muscles and then you're going to go back out. So you're going to do 12 of these. And
then the next one I want you to do is, your hand is straight and you're opening and twisting at the
same time, that way you're working some of the supination muscles, which are the muscles that
twist the hand open like this. And then you're going back slowly. And then to switch it over
to the other side, it's pretty straightforward you're just gonna unhook, pull your hand out,
switch it over, use that other sixth finger for the other thumb, and then go through and hook
all the fingers up, tighten it to where it feels comfortable for you, and the same thing again.
And slowly relax, and you want to hold it out for five seconds. And so what I really like about this
is it isolates out each one of the fingers. In the past that used to tell people to use a rubber
band and just go out like that with a rubber band, which is also an option for those of you
who aren't interested in buying this device which specifically targets each finger, but what I found
with that is is tough because some of the stronger fingers dominate and the smaller, weaker fingers
don't have a chance to really pull their weight, so this is nice because it's equal strength
throughout the whole thing and you can slowly drop it down. And as you get stronger, you can increase
the tension by dropping it down to the next level. Like this. So this is one good device that creates
balance in the body and that's the take home. So, for everything that you do you want to make
sure that there's balance. All right, thanks for listening, let me know if you have any questions.