♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Well, hi there, folks.
I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Humble opinion. - Humble.
- Today we're gonna talk about pain relief
for wrist, hand and fingers.
We're gonna show you seven exercises/treatments.
- Right.
- So we just did a video recently on wrist pain, right?
- Exactly, Bob.
- Seemed like it was a big hit,
so we thought we'd take it a little further
because often the fingers and the hand
might be involved, too. - Yep.
They're all connected and very close together,
so we wanna be complete, Bob.
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- There you go.
Bob, these are all treatments and exercises
you can do at home.
You may not do all seven, but you're gonna find
probably two or three of 'em are gonna be very effective.
- It's like a buffet, you go to a buffet
and you pick out the things you like.
- Buffet, you better believe it.
So here we go, the first one.
If you find that either cold or heat
makes your wrists feel better then you do more of it.
- Sure.
- On the other hand, if cold makes 'em feel worse,
well, stay away from the cold.
And my situation, the last couple years of my life,
my hands, all of sudden the circulation has changed.
My dad had the same symptoms when he got
close to 60 and older.
Stiffness and whatnot, so I'm really attuned
to this particular subject. - Sure.
Now, unlike me, who has had cold hands
my entire life, so welcome to the club,
by the way. - Yeah.
Well, it's a pleasure, Bob.
So if heat makes your hands and your wrists
feel better, use it.
- And that's generally the rule of thumb,
wouldn't you say? - Right, right.
- More people are gonna have trouble.
There is also a thing called contrast baths
where you can actually do heat and then cold
and heat and cold, you can look it up
if you wanna check that out. - Right.
- Some people have luck with that, too.
- So if you wash dishes and your hands feel
so much better after that.
You could do the contrast on the other sink.
If you got the divided sink you could
put cold water in one and hot in the other and try that.
- You usually go one minute,
well, you start off five minutes in the warm,
then you do one minute in the cold,
one minute in the warm, one minute hot, back and forth.
- Yeah, yep, yep.
If heat is the only thing that works good
and you really wanna get some deep heat,
we will give you some information on that
because just normal heat, water,
using your typical hot pack that you get--
- Or like radiant heat, it's only gonna penetrate
very minimal, like a millimeter or so.
- Skin-deep, essentially.
If you do wanna get deeper and do it at home
without going to a therapist or something,
what you're gonna need to do is get an infrared hot pad.
- Yeah, far infrared heat.
This heating system actually penetrates 2.36 inches.
- Right.
- So that's gonna go right through the hand.
Right through the wrist. - It's gonna heat the wrist,
the fingers, the whole works.
This particular one is a larger one,
and you think, "Why would I need that for my hands?"
But you could use it for your knee,
you could use it for your hip.
- They do have it for the wrist.
- You could use this on your knee, your hip, your back.
And for the hand, we found out that it works really well.
You can do both hands at once just by
wrapping this around like such, and then you have a muff.
And you put both hands in there and while you're watching TV
you can sit there and--
And you should probably do this before
you touch any patients, and me too,
because people always go, my hands are really cold,
everybody's like, "Ah!
"You could cool my beer down with those hands!"
- And the next thing.
Now, these are just some stretches.
I decided to break this down into motions
and we're gonna work on flexions first,
just bringing the fingers in, all the way in,
and then make sure you go down with the wrist.
And just repeat that, do that about 10 times,
and you'll find each time you do it
it gets a little more easy.
The pain drops down with the motion,
and the increased range of motion.
- I like the twist, too, Brad.
- Oh, that's right, that's a good idea
that adds a little extra. - The twist.
- Doesn't take hardly anything but two seconds at most.
Then, the next thing is we wanna go the opposite direction.
This is what I've had a lot of patients do.
I say, put your hands together palm-to-palm,
finger-to finger.
Now, if you're stiff, you won't be able
to collapse it and get flat right away,
so you just have to work on that.
I call that the spider in the on the mirror.
You go like this, it's like your hand's on a mirror.
- Oh, sure.
- So you just push together and repeat that.
And once you get your fingers so they're touching
and you have palm-palm, finger-to-finger,
then you can go like this
and just do the rest of the stretch.
You may only get this far to begin with,
but as you do more you just try and get far as you can.
Again, more motion, you get things loosened up,
better circulation, pain goes down,
everything is much better.
The next one is simple wrist circles.
Gentle fist, don't make a tight fist.
A gentle fist, and work 'em five to ten repetitions.
- And go in the opposite direction, too.
- Absolutely.
Now, this is one that I've been teaching,
and Bob just started it, he likes it.
- Yeah, I think this is awesome.
- If this is the wrist, this is just for the wrist.
If this is the wrist that's painful and stiff,
this hand is gonna grab over the top
of back of the palm, the dorsal side of the hand
we call that in therapy world.
And now I'm going to stabilize my arm on my thigh.
You could do this on a table, as well.
And relax this hand, stabilize here with this hand,
and then you're just gonna give some traction,
pull straight out.
Pull straight out--
- I could pull Brad's hand right off his body.
- Right, yep.
But it's not going anywhere, Bob.
- Not going anywhere. - Nope, it's gonna stay.
And do that three to five times.
You can do it more if you'd like.
And now, the other little neat thing you can do with this
is grab the hand and just keep this hand stabilized,
like it's not gonna move.
And if you can zoom in on my wrist, Mike,
we're gonna give it a little traction,
and how much is up to you,
and then I'm gonna rotate my forearm.
And that gives you a lotta rotational movement
in that joint, and sometimes that can be the trick
that makes it feel like it pops.
- [Bob] That's the thing that I thought was really neat.
I think that's a great way to get some motion in there
with traction, and you can often relieve some pain that way.
- That's right.
Obviously, do both hands or wrists as needed.
The next thing is, if you got a soft ball.
Don't get a tennis ball, that's too hard.
I've got a couple options.
It doesn't even have to ball, this is a little--
- Foam.
- Yeah, foam thing that was kinda knitted up
by one of our past employees.
But it's soft, and you can just
squeeze into something soft.
And the nice thing about this is you can
work individual fingers--
- So working on strengthening now.
- Right, strengthening, but some range of motion.
That's why it needs to be soft.
This one is one of those balls that has liquid
or gel or something in it.
And this is kinda neat.
It feels better on your fingers.
Sometimes just the texture of the ball
can make a difference on how it feels
in your hands and how it works.
- And like you said, with that one, too,
you can work one finger at a time.
- Right, yep.
- If you have a specific finger that's giving you trouble.
- My third digit here is really stiff.
It's much stiffer than the other one,
and I do work that one differently.
Say, I could just work that like that.
- Sure.
- It's weird, I find these things
like when I'm checking out at a store,
and they're for a dollar or two, usually.
I never know why.
Actually, I got this one online,
or somebody did. - Sure.
- But anyways, they pop up here and there.
You can take 'em from your grandkids or whatever.
Just kidding, just kidding.
- All right, you have one left.
And Brad, you were gonna do some strengthening.
- Yep, if you have a dumbbell.
I'm just gonna do one hand
and then you can just drop it down.
So this is a little range of motion
and a little strengthening,
because it's nice to get a little stronger.
Now, you gotta watch out for your toes
in case it falls off.
- Yeah, you wanna make sure they're clear.
- Yep.
- Now, you can also go to the side, right, Brad?
- Exactly right, Bob.
And you can go this direction, as well.
So all three directions.
You can use a soup can, you don't have to
go out and buy a dumbbell.
I am gonna show one option that I've found
works really well for mine,
'cause I'll do my exercise in the morning,
when my hands are stiffest out of bed.
- I did find this surprising, Brad, I'm gonna be honest.
- I did, too, actually.
- This, for most people,
this is for someone who's kinda younger
and really wants to strengthen their grip.
I've been using it 'cause I'm younger.
- Right.
- You didn't hear the joke.
I said I've been using it because I'm younger.
- Well, Bob, I knew you were just BSing.
- By the way, this is a great grip strengthener,
but you've been using it, too, for your--
- Well, actually, I started using this for grip strength,
that was my sole purpose, and then,
delightfully, I found out that,
I'm gonna put two here--
- You don't do all four in the mornings, do you?
- Yeah.
- You do all four?
- Actually, I do, I go like this now.
I've gotten stronger, Bob, so it works really well.
I'm up onto the extra-- - Oh, wow!
- And go like this, and then--
- [Bob] That's a lot of resistance.
- [Brad] Well, it's amazing if you do it consistently
for a couple months, you get stronger.
- [Bob] Yeah, you really do.
We actually measured my grip strength before I started
and after I started and I gained like 20, 30 pounds
of grip strength.
- So I guess if you were someone that needed
a strong grip, maybe your job,
but you have stiffness in the joints and the hands,
this might be a good alternative for that person.
In the morning, before you go to work or whatever it may be.
Even right now, this feels really good on my joints
and my fingers, I really appreciate it.
- I would say, Brad, this is not for the 70-year-old
man or woman, you know what I mean?
This would be too much for them.
- Unless they're a young, you know,
they're more active than most people at that age,
you're right, Bob.
'Cause I don't wanna have people spend their money
on one of these and then find out, "This is not for me."
- Yeah, this is for someone who's younger.
- That's why I kept it for the end of the video.
- Sure.
What's funny is, by using this,
I actually took on Alex in a grip-strengthening contest.
How old is Alex, what, he's 30?
I think he's 30 now, which is young to me.
- That's half your age, Bob. - Half my age.
And he didn't think I'd beat him, and I beat him
pretty handily, handily, get it?
- Yeah, and he's not just a skinny little--
- No, he's not a skinny guy.
So it's amazing, when you work on grip strength.
I got the claw now, remember the claw?
That was a wrestling guy.
- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was like Hulk Hogan or something like that.
- I don't know if that was more a regional thing.
Let me know if you've heard the claw
as far as for all-star wrestling.
- Well, yeah, because Robin Williams,
didn't he have the claw in that one movie
with the vacation, so I figured if it was
on Hollywood stuff it's all over the place.
- Yeah, maybe so, but I-- - The claw!
- It wasn't Robin Williams, it was Jim Carrey.
- Jim Carrey, you know him, too, huh?
- Thanks for watching.
(bright music)