unlock your wrists, decrease pain, and strengthen 'em

so you can be more functional with opening those bottles

of soup, et cetera.

- (laughs)

You know, cans-

- Jar.

- Jar. Jar of jam.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, we'll get to it in 9.3 seconds and I don't mean maybe.

♪ Bob and Brad ♪

♪ The two most famous ♪

♪ Physical therapists on the internet ♪

- Okay, so first of all, to unlock the wrist

when your wrists feel like they're kind of locked

up and they need to get cracked, there's something-

- They're tight.

- Yeah, they're tight.

This is the routine you're gonna start out with.

Bob will show the side view-

- Side version.

- Or the profile. I'll show front.

Gentle, gentle fist. Nothing tight.

You can leave your fingers loose if you'd like

and go up and down like you're waving.

Up and down. Do that five to 10 times.

You may feel them start to crack a little bit with this.

And then, circles,

you can do it with fists or with open fingers,

it doesn't matter.

About five rotations one way,

five rotations the other way.

More if you'd like to, depends on how it's feeling.

And now this next one, this is an important one

but you have to be very careful and do it properly.

You should not experience any pain with this.

It should feel good.

- And don't pull your hand off.

- Yeah, don't pull your hand off.

- (laughs)

- This is called decompression or a little traction.

So we're going to, we got a good closeup mic.

Okay.

This is the wrist that we're gonna decompress and unlock.

Okay?

(air whooshes)

So what works good with this is do it

in a seated position with a pillow like this

and you're gonna set that on your lap

and you can rest your arm on there.

So it's completely relaxed.

Okay? I'm gonna take the other hand

and grab the hand above the wrist and support it.

This arm is gonna stay relaxed.

- So you're above these two bones.

- Yep. Above those two bones.

The wrist joint where the crease is

is where we're grabbing above.

This hand is gonna pull and get a little traction

- Distortion, right?

- Yep. Now, if you watch real closely

you should see the joint-

- Expand.

- Yep. I'm pulling it apart slightly.

Okay. And once you get a feel for that

and you can still do it relaxed-

If you get any sharp pain with this, you stop.

It's not the right thing to do for you.

- Right.

- Should feel good.

- Immediately.

- Yep. If it feels good, you can continue.

And then once you pull out, you can-

You maintain the traction, the pullout pressure.

Now watch what I do here.

I'm gonna rotate just my forearm.

The hand maintains the hand position.

- So the forearms do the work.

- Yeah. And that really mobilizes and loosens up that wrist.

You know, there's, we got eight bones

and three joints in that wrist

and a lot more up in the carpals in the hand part.

- This is a great technique.

- Yep. It feels better already, Bob.

- Yeah, it looks better.

- Now we need to show you how to strengthen it

after you do this and get it loose.

(air whooshing)

Okay? Now we're gonna start strengthening it.

And I did say in the title

there's no cost for this, so you know

hopefully you can go into your kitchen, grab a can

of soup, 12 ounce, 16 ounces

- Jar of soup.

- Jar of soup. (laughs)

I'm really getting it good there.

Bottle of water, whatever.

If you happen to have a-

- A weight.

- A dumbbell, I've got one seated-

I mean, one right here

- (laughs) Thanks a lot.

- You can use that.

So you're gonna take that

and you're gonna put it over your thigh like this.

Or if you're at a table, I'm gonna use the bench here

and just work wrist flexion, we call it.

And up and down like this.

And after 10 to 15 repetitions

you should start to feel the muscles get tired.

- Right.

- If they're not tired, get a bigger can of soup.

Get a bigger dumbbell.

- Bigger jar of soup.

- Bigger jar of soup. (laughs)

Okay? Then flip your wrist over so your palm is down

and go ahead and do that direction.

This direction almost always is weaker than this.

- Right.

- You'll find you'll-

if you can do 15 this way-

- A little stronger, more.

- Yep. You can probably only do 10 this way.

Okay?

Now if you-

- Neutral.

- Neutral, yep.

So like you got your thumb up

you're gonna go sideways like that.

If your thumb was here

it's so like you're doing a baby hitchhiker, same thing.

10 to 15 repetitions and that'll do you wonders.

Now, if you did have a can of soup

what you're gonna do then is take it, open it up and eat it.

- (laughs)

- If you got a, you know-

- Very good.

- You need some nutrients for the work you've done.

Oh, just kidding.

- And no pain by the way, right?

- Right. No pain with all these.

It should feel a little fatigued, but that's-

It shouldn't be irritated after you're done and sore.

- Right.

- It may be the first time you do this

so that means you went too hard.

Give it a couple days off.

- Right.

- And then go back to it.

- And do less times.

- Now, the next thing you're gonna get is hopefully

maybe have a hammer for tacking up,

put the nails in the wall to hang up the pictures

of the grandkids and everything,

- (laughs)

- Or take 'em down.

Anyways, take a hammer

and you're gonna grab it here and we're gonna-

this works different muscles.

This is called supination or rotation.

Put it here.

- Supination, pronation.

- Supination, pronation. What did I say?

I don't know either.

So let it go this way and this way.

But be careful if you grab it here and you don't realize

that your wrist is weak and it goes like this

or you got too big of a hammer

this could twist and hurt your wrist.

- Right.

- So I would start out grabbing close

to the head of the hammer and just do this.

If it's too easy, simply raise it up.

It'll get harder.

- So what about a sledgehammer?

- Sledgehammer? Yes.

When you work up to a sledge hammer

you've got Popeye wrists.

So good strong ones.

But again, five to 10.

If you wanna go to 15 repetitions

it's up to you depending what you tolerate.

Again, no pain, just fatigue is all we want to feel.

Now this one, you can go forward and backwards like this.

- Sure.

- And that works some other muscles.

That's not so important.

If you've gotta open up that jar of jam

this is a motion that's gonna really help you with that

as well as our next exercise.

(air whooshes)

Part of strengthening the wrist is really

critical for the wrist as well as function,

like opening that jar of mayonnaise or miracle whip

if you like that.

- There we go.

- Is you have to work your grip.

This works the finger grip as well as the wrist

at the same time.

The best way to do it is get yourself a ball that's squishy.

Now, Bob's got one that's really soft and squishy

- Really easy.

- And this one is a little more firm.

I would not use anything like, you know

golf ball's too hard.

Tennis balls are typically too hard.

You need something-

- Softball.

- Yeah, you need something squishy.

- Baseball.

- And you simply grab on the ball and you can do this

while you're watching TV or just relaxing

and squish the ball until you get fatigued.

- Right.

- Again, there should be no pain, you know

make sure you get the thumb.

Sometimes people only do the fingers

but make sure you get the thumb.

You can do the thumb by itself.

You can actually do the fingers individually.

If one of your fingers is real tight

like Bob's got dup- What's-

- Dupuytren's.

- Dupuytren's on one of those fingers

so it's too stiff to exercise.

You work the other ones

and that's one of the beauties of having a nice squishy ball

and they're nice to work with.

That's good for stimulation of the tactile,

you know, tactile stimulation. That's-

- I agree.

- Yeah. (laughs) Bob concurs.

It's a therapy thing.

So anyway, seriously, a nice soft ball can really do well.

You do all those things

and this is gonna make a significant difference

on your strength, the pain in your wrist, and make you a-

A wrist and grip worthy.

- You can choke a chicken.

- (laughs) Choke a chicken, thanks Bob.

- (laughs)

- Okay, thank you very much for watching

and work on those wrists on a daily basis.

Be careful.

- (laughs)

(upbeat guitar music)