♪ Bob and Brad, the two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists on the internet ♪
(Brad chuckles)
- 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.
- Today, we're gonna talk about
best wrist and grip exercises
with resistance bands.
- That's right. Bob,
Bob, resistance bands have been used for decades
by therapists, occupational therapists,
physical therapists. - Not doing anything new.
- Right, exactly.
Except for the devices that you use
have come a long way
and make it easier and better. - They've been modified and -
- Yep. - Improved.
- Exactly.
- Well, we are gonna give away, Brad,
by the way, we should mention, right?
Yeah, okay, we're giving away five massage,
well, four massage guns
and one handheld massager. - Right, look at that.
- One person gets all five of these.
So your Christmas list is gonna be taken care of.
- That's right, you keep your favorite one
and give the other four out to family and friends
and anybody who you want to get on your side
for the rest of the year,
they'll love you.
- Yeah, go to bobandbrad.com,
go to the giveaway section or go to Facebook
and go, it'll be pinned to the top of the page.
- The gun'll be pinned to the top of the -
- That post. - I always,
the post, there you go. - All right.
- All right, let's get on with this wrist thing,
because wrists, obviously strength is so important
for everything that you do.
- It is.
- If you've got strong shoulders and arms
and you don't have strong hands and wrists, well.
- Yeah, it all fails right there.
- Exactly right.
It's like if you don't have a strong core,
you've got strong arms - - Right.
- The whole body works together.
One thing that, Bob, you wanna talk about this a little bit?
I'm gonna set up, 'cause - - Sure.
- A way to - - What people need to know
is that we're trying to strengthen the grip.
And we're also trying to strengthen the wrist,
but to strengthen these,
the muscles are actually down in here.
Even for the fingers,
they travel all the way down into the forearm
on both sides of the forearm.
We have the extensors, we have the flexors.
So this device,
or these exercises - - Yep.
- Are focusing on the wrist
and a little bit of the grip too,
I mean. - Mm-hm, yep.
- But that way we're working on the muscles
that actually can seriously improve your strength.
- Right, you can just grab
the spring-loaded exercises - - Right.
- And they work the finger muscles,
but they don't do much for the wrist.
- They don't work the wrist.
- Right, so this is
a complete exercise. - Right.
It's gonna give you better,
better results. - You may wanna do it
as an adjunct. - Yeah.
- If you wanna still squeeze the ball or whatever,
squeeze the (indistinct). - Precisely, yeah,
it's a good thing to put together.
So a lot of people have these bands, the two bands.
- Right. - Okay,
oftentimes with the handle.
Now I'm gonna show you three primary exercises
and a couple of options on how to do it.
What I'm gonna suggest is to stabilize your forearm
on a table.
Now I just have this here, that's a stool,
but this is about the same height as a table,
kitchen table. - Right, right.
- Firm table.
Put your chair up next to it.
Put your hand over the edge.
Now, if you don't have a handle
and you just have the band,
you can grab the band.
I've had many patients just grab a hold of a,
actually more of a ribbon band or the flat one.
Put it around on your foot.
And you're gonna adjust the resistance
by how far you put here,
or in this case, I could use two bands,
one band. - Or, right, exactly.
Or three bands, even.
- Yep, exactly.
And then I'm gonna do flexion.
Now, I really, typically when you get these tubes,
you're gonna get the handle.
- Oh, yeah. - And I highly advise -
- [Bob] Makes a big difference.
- Yep, it's all the difference in the world,
more comfortable.
It works as a better exercise.
And if it slips on your foot,
what you do is you simply wrap around your foot like that.
And it locks in really nicely.
And now, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna do this motion,
but watch the little addition.
That's really important.
I'm gonna go down, and as far as I can,
I'm gonna let my fingers roll open right here.
And then I'm gonna roll up as far as we can.
- [Bob] Now you can see what we're talking about here.
The muscles that are involved here are in the forearm.
You can see them working.
- That's right.
So we're gonna do 10 to 15 repetitions.
By the time you're done,
you'll feel the muscles burning and the fatigue.
And then it's time to go the other direction.
I'm gonna put my palm down.
Now these muscles, the extensors, are typically weaker
in pretty much everyone (laughs).
- Yeah, I know when I finish up with those,
I don't get that many reps. - Yeah.
- I mean, they go to failure pretty quick.
- So I'm gonna go to one band.
You do whatever you need to do, the varied resistance.
Shorten, lengthen the band.
And then I'm gonna go like this.
And you can see, these muscles are working more
and this is an important exercise to do
because these muscles, like Bob had mentioned before,
are critical with the grip and the forearm strength.
Now we're gonna actually add one more.
And that's, if you're gonna take your thumb
and go up like this,
and it works really well of this,
like this. - Brad, you think
about how many sports, grip is involved.
- Yeah, absolutely. - I mean, golf, baseball.
- Yep, yep. - Softball, hockey.
I mean, all of that requires that strong wrist strength
and a strong grip.
- Right, and including bike riding.
- Sure. - Not so much road biking,
but if you're a mountain biker,
grip strength is - - Oh, sure.
- Enormous.
- And wrestling, your strength.
- Oh, my goodness, yes, yes.
Now I'm gonna show you something
that we think even works better than this.
If you have these, these'll work fine.
If you wanna go to the next step up,
you're gonna, and you want to save some time
and it works better.
(Bob intones)
We have a grip strengthener
and the person who invented this
happened to be a rock climber. - Right.
- And a engineer. (chuckles)
And he wanted to, he didn't like this grip strengthener.
- Right. - He wanted something better,
more effective for him.
And something that would save a little time.
Were you gonna say something, Bob?
- No, I just said it was very important with rock climbing.
- Oh! (laughs) - I mean, your life
depends upon it. - Yeah, especially
if you're not, if you don't have
that safety rope around you - - Right.
- Like some people.
Now, I'm not trying to show off my legs,
but - - And you're not.
- Yeah, I know, it's embarrassing.
But if my wife sees this video,
she'll say, "What the hell are you doing?"
Oh, it's a family show. - Heck, heck!
What the heck are you doing? - Heck, yeah.
So the reason that I'm doing it
is you can see the bands.
If my black pants and this,
they just blend in. - Yeah.
- So anyways, what you do is, we got these loops.
You may wondering what in the world is this contraption?
We've got a handle that swivels very nicely.
We've got the loops.
Now what you do is, I'm gonna take two loops
and put it around one foot here,
two loops around the other foot here, there.
And now I get stronger.
- [Bob] Right.
- (laughs) No, you're gonna
take this - - That's (indistinct).
- I'm gonna grip it like this
And I'm gonna do both wrists at the same time.
You can get it from this angle.
And I drop it down as far as I can.
And this rotates nice and smooth.
It really makes that nice.
And I go -
- [Bob] Yeah, that's a heavy- duty handle.
- Yeah. - It's metal.
- [Brad] (chuckles) Yeah.
You're gonna, you can run a car over it
and it's not gonna
affect it at all. - Right.
- Now, if this is too too much,
I'm gonna bring my feet together, makes it easier.
Feet apart, makes it a little more difficult.
- If it's still too much,
you can go to one loop on each foot.
- Exactly.
So I'm gonna drop off one loop.
And now when I use mine at home,
I go two loops for flexion.
Then I drop it off like this.
And then these are just in the air
and I use one loop
and I go out a little bit wider
'cause that works good for me.
And I extend,
and I do those exercises 10 times
and I'm not too concerned about my grip strength.
I do it for maintenance,
for strength, it is true,
but also just for my wrists,
it keeps them more active
or mobile. - Right.
- I have a little arthritis in my fingers.
And now to get this motion,
like I mentioned on your other one,
I'm gonna grab it on the end.
- (indistinct) the hitchhiker.
- Yep, it's like, my thumbs are going up
and I'm gonna put them down to grip.
And now you can go down here.
You can come up here.
I like to go up here.
It's a little more stable.
(hands pat thighs)
Your thighs actually become the table.
- [Bob] Right, right.
- [Brad] And they stabilize.
So you isolate
those wrist muscles. - By the stability.
- Oh, and that really, really works my,
I got to go a little, I was showing off.
Or you could actually go to one loop
on one foot.
- Right. - And that works just fine.
You just go at a little angle.
You can work it like this. - Lot of
strength options, yep.
- Yeah, it is really a nice device.
And if you're gonna get serious
about long-term grip strengthening,
it's a wonderful device.
- Yeah, especially if, like you said,
if you're wanting one of those sports
where grip is paramount - - Right.
- I would look at this. - Right, right.
Well, like Chris's son, he's a hockey player.
- Yeah. - He uses one of these.
- Oh, does he? - Yeah, it's amazing,
what you do with that - - Yeah, they flip the wrist.
- Yeah, I guess those slap shots
are really something else. - Right.
- I don't really know
what they are. - I'm not really
a hockey guy either, so I don't know either.
- Well, one way or another, you will -
- Oh, basketball, gotta grab that basketball
and hold onto it.
- Well, I, after using this, there are some people
grab a basketball
and pop it! - And pop it!
- Yeah! - Oh, sorry.
- Just kidding.
- Gonna pop your head. - Anyway,
yeah, strong like bull.
_ All right, take care. - Good luck with everything.
(lively music)