Corrective Exercises and Modifications for Carpal Tunnel, Wrist Pain & Grip Strength
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Hey coaches athletes, Michael Hughes here with Gymnazo Edu excited to come at you with our last installment in our tweakology series on the wrist, that separate the long end of the chain of the body, and is so important with training and conditioning, especially for all your coaches out there. This is a big, big deal about this risks. And as we understand and cover the anatomy, the bones, the muscles of this thing, and also the common exercises of dysfunctions and tweaks associated with the wrist, I want you to get a greater understanding of what you can do as a trainer or even as an athlete. And through getting through your program and getting through your workout. So we can modify around it tweak around it, that’s a word that we like to use to make sure that you can be successful, continue your workout, get the gains, but not damage the body as you get through it. So in our understanding of tweak ology, it’s taking the mastery of the anatomy and the biomechanics, and also the understanding of what you can do about it, all the different tweaks all the different variables that come into play. And we’re gonna be showing you through that understanding this process is also understanding that there’s a revolutionary process in the fitness and athletic industry happening right now fueled by the knowledge in the past, that has been held by those who had to have a six figure, degree or license. And even that knowledge that was had, is still incomplete. And it shouldn’t also, it’s easy to use goals to share that knowledge and therefore enable a greater capability to those individuals have the most power and capacity to help the greatest number of people. And those are the movement trainers of the world. But before Australians can do that, we need to know a lot about how and why the human body functions the way it does, not just from textbooks or traditional education, but from the multitude of methodologies that are rooted in the principles of physics, biological and Behavioral Sciences, or the applied functional sciences, and is then we the movement trainers, that’s when we can fill the gap that has been a big void in the greater healthcare system. So let this series just be a drop of water a little bit of kind of an insight into what you can start doing on how to think about human movement in the training and conditioning environment. And then once we’re all educated enough and driven by the applied principles, first practice right principles, first notch theory first, then we can vastly improve the capacity and capability to train any individual that steps into our facility or the you get in front of so if you support this revolution, hit the like button. So this content gets shared with more more people just like you, if you want to join this revolution, we can start by hitting the subscribe button. And also checking out the application for our multi dimensional movement coaching, mentorship, and you can check that out in the description below. i Let’s get right into this. And let’s talk about the anatomy of the wrist where the major players here Well, the bones, the bones are really important because you understand it’s much more than just the wrist, it’s the humerus way up top down into the elbow joint, and then the radius and the ulna. And of course, the carpals, living right in the wrist there themselves. Now, as I spoke about in the foot, you might check that video out the tarsal is a way down here, the torsos and carpals. They play very similar roles, and how the body functions just with the wrist, it’s much more open chain, where the tarsalis down below are much more closed chain. So they have a very similar similar relationship with their biomechanics. What about the muscles involved with the wrist? Well, there are a lot of them. And it really comes down to the primary 20 muscles that come through the forearm. They’re big players, big, big players in this game, because they are direct controllers of the movement that I’ll cover a little bit later. But we also understand that the bicep and triceps influence those forearms, so does the chest muscles, and so does the subscapular muscles. Student essentially the scapular muscles, and how they involve there’s a lot of back there, it’s about 17 other muscles that control the scapula, which therefore controls the arm, which therefore controls the wrist. So a lot to play into it. And we’ll be talking about how we can prime and in condition those to make a better wrist function through a workout. So the biomechanics of the wrist are complex, it’s very mobile joint, its primary primary motion that you can see is flexion and extension. However, it’s not that simple, right? Because there’s also pronation and supination through that wrist, but with those motions, there’s what’s called owner deviation and radial deviation or abduction and adduction. right lateral lateral flexion. It’s really the wrist moves and combinations of those three different planes of motion. And here’s a little side note, if somebody for you to think about why you screws or threads, tighten to the right and loosen to the left or right tighty lefty loosey. Where’d that come from? You know, why is it tightening clockwise to say a little differently and loosening counter clockwise? Well, our forearms have a little bit more musculature and ability to spin in what we call owner deviation, or into lateral flexion to the same side using my right hand, and supination, we have more muscles that do that than the opposite motion patterns with radial deviation, or pronation. And since 70 to 90% of people are right handed, this is where the standard was set, my right hand has the ability to go here and here more verses there, and they’re more and therefore to tighten, we go clockwise, I mean, loosen, we go counterclockwise, because we want to make things tighter, with more muscles, and we’ll figure out how to loosen it some other way. I guess that was the standard they were thinking about. So something to note, because that is something how we do very often outside of the workout, but people bring that that common movement pattern into workout. So there’s gonna be a lot of dysfunctions with that motion. And that motion, perhaps more than the opposite, just something to consider if they have that type of job, especially in construction. It’s a big, big play there. What are common dysfunctions that come into the wrist? Well, probably the one that has gets the most press is carpal tunnel syndrome, right? That’s typically with keyboard jockeys, right, people that are puff up up typing away, or people there’s habitus user risk, much more older clientele older athletes, have probably the most common that you see in a workout is just pain with extension, right that toward motion right there. Because that holds a lot of positions that we commonly do in fitness. Also very common up position, as we’re actually typing on a keyboard we’re holding extension as we’re on keyboards, so a very, very primal positioning, right? In today’s standard world, right, I’m using the word primal for today versus back in the day, they were also looking at grip strength, grip strength is a problem thing. And of course, arthritis within that realm. So those four things really play a big part in a lot of our clientele, and probably your clientele, or yourself, and what are we going to do about it? Right, so let’s dive into that. What are we going to do about planks? Or hip tribes? Like what are we going to do about when we’re in this position here? Right, it was just engineer and our wrist, bugs us in that position on planks, what the biggest thing we can do, and it’s it may be simple, but I want to make it very obvious is just get out of that position. Instead of here, get into that plank position there. And let’s just take the risk out of it. Right, very simple way to do it. But I want to start one right off the bat, kind of real quick, quick hitter. But the next thing I’d like to talk about is with these risk guards, we have multiple sets of these in our facility with crawling, with push ups with planks. And it really allows our athletes to get into a position of much more of a stacked wrist, much less of an extension position. So lessons drive down through the risks, much more than add to that position there. And we have plenty of these and we’ve gone through quite a few of them, just to find the best one that allows us to have the most amount of broad surface and also move ability as we can change it and not have too much flimsiness in it. So risk art is a play, as we call it a risk art is a big, big play in our training and conditioning to just get us out of that position. So what about movement patterns? Well, typically, if I’m in a push up position here, I will find if I externally rotate that movement, or that position, rather, and then go through a movement, I’m going to be much more successful. Because our body likes it, it likes it has more capacity and ability to go through owner deviation and that supination field versus going here, I wind up a lot more of my shoulder and get an app spot is much more of a harder wrist position, versus being externally rotated. So that extra rotation is an easy one that you can also look into to avoid that risk positioning that’s uncomfortable. You can also change the directions of how your body moves within a plank or some sort of hip drive, right. So in a in a plank or so on this side as I’m going to plank and I drive through this, this pattern, if I go down by pelt my pelvis goes down into more extension, that’s going to create more relative extension at my wrist. So if I don’t go into it up and down wrist and if I hook hold higher, the higher I go into more of a pike preposition, or post your hips, I actually get relative less extension at that wrist.
So Alright, that sounds nice. I can now do a hip drive or a plank with a higher hip. It’s easier, but honestly, you can make it more you can make it much harder by taking that hip high and then driving left and right or rotating down to keep into a better spot. So if you don’t want to do that, because it’s too easy for the client, then put that risk that’s a little challenge into To have more of a anterior position, we call this our x x position where my right hand is in front of my left hand or a stride position with your feet. But just in your hands. Now I can go through my, my plank, even my motion pattern, and I’m in that position there, which is much easier on my wrist than anything else. So changing positions of your hands, changing the motion of your body, also all can feed down into that wrist and something that you can do. A lot of now I’m going to talk about push ups next to very similar thing, in terms of position. So you can think back on what I just talked about a push up position, and what you can do about the push up there, but it also applies, but what about something different? What about adding the risk cards to your push ups, right? Same thing I just talked about. But what about changing the way that you do a push up? Now, we may not all have this equipment, but it’s something to look into. As I, if you’re in a workout setting like gosh, I have bands ready? Well, if I now go into a hold position with a handle, I can now change my wrist into a much more of a stacked position. Again, you may not have this equipment, but something to think about quickly, just hey, push up hertz, come on up, grab onto a band, let’s go into a push position where your wrist is stacked and in line with your forum. Easy way to do do that. So if any sort of pulling machine in any sort of bands, a TRX, all those things would work to get that wrist pain out of that painful position and get it aligned much more. So that would be one option right there. Obviously, if you don’t have a risk guard, we do we have power blocks, you can see as my hand is in there, it’s on that handle, right, this also works as a risk guard. In a sense, you see my wrist is actually in in that handle there, but it still uses as a risk card. So you don’t have to necessarily jump online to buy some risk cards, we have dumbbells that would work just the same to make that same stacking position happen, and just overall allow the workout to happen without putting undue stress on that wrist. Now, I’m going to end with this last kind of common exercise, which really just has to do with not necessarily if the risk is in pain, but the the arthritis that comes with just age, and what do we do about them. And typically, it’s not just our wrist is hurt, it’s free, we just had to week, there’s not enough help from friends, for muscles, shoulder muscles to engage that wrist. For just proper structural stability, you haven’t worked out in a long time, you haven’t gotten thrown in a long time, you haven’t put load underneath that wrist, you’ve maybe had hanging load carrying groceries or a bag, but not stacking, load. And that’s a different feel for the preceptors and therefore for the muscles. So I’m gonna talk about a few ways that we go about priming the wrist to make it much more successful, because it isn’t just about avoiding it, you can also use it in your workout to help it kind of fix it in a sense or guide it. So with use of like dumbbell sandals, vipers, barbells cables, kind of anything that needs to be held, we need to think about what can we do about that to make that risk better. So I’m going to show you something that we have in our facility. And it’s a rice bucket. Right? Right, they’re about a 10 gallon bucket of rice. And what we’ll do with our clients, is we’ll prime their wrists and their four muscles by digging their hand into that rice. And through several different movement patterns. I won’t go through all of them here, but one of them simply just grabbing rice, and then digging my hand deep and moving my wrist through flexion extension through lateral motion through rotation clockwise and counterclockwise all the way through that pattern. And that’s just primal wrist motion, I can also do is do digit motion, I can do flexion extension through my digits through my fingers, I can go lateral motion here, I get my hands little higher. So I can see that. And I can go rotational motion with each individual digit. If I want to or all together, I can do that with my thumb as well. And I can combine those as well I can actually grab rice but have one finger sticking out to get more through my medial part of my forearm or through my pinky sticking out I can grab rice have my pinky sticking out underneath the rice and get more from my lateral side of my forearm. So this is a great tool that we have. It’s awesome for those who have arthritis and need a little bit more muscle tension. To guide through connective tissue. The stress goes through connective tissue versus stress going through the joints themselves. And that’s a great, great tool that I recommend very inexpensive and you can get just in any hardware store and of course your local grocery store. So not one to be missed on that one. Also, we can use mobility sticks, right or some sort of six to actually grab on and pry movement through our shoulders by taking a stick or instead of doubt and pull apart that you can’t see movement. It’s isometric, but I’m actually pulling the stick apart, pulling it apart, and I get tension through my upper shoulder blades. And through my shoulder girdle allows me to get more scapular retraction. In a sense, I can do the same thing with pushing the stick together, I get more anterior, more chest more more kind of shoulder protraction and allows the shoulder girdle to feed some tension that may be over put here and feed it back up top. So many ways I can do that, I can do that by pushing down, I can even maybe trap this as well with my feet and pull up. And I get that up down that left, right, I can even take this from my hands and I can try to break it apart by snapping it like like that, I can’t do that with my wrist. Of course, here, I can snap in half. And I can fold it in and try to break it there. So it’s all isometrics. But again, we’re talking about reprogramming the tissue to allow it to have friends to support for overstressed here and under stressed medicines not showed up. Not bringing the friends to the party felt that wrist out. Of course, we have our cables and our bands, we can use the same thing versus just an actual fixed piece of plastic, right, we can use bands for that one. And I we do this often in a push up position, we’ll take a band, put it around someone’s wrist and get into a push up position. Now I want to have as I have that same kind of pressure pushing out into my shoulder blades into my shoulder, allowing my shoulders to be more primed the muscles to be more active. And therefore as I go through my pushup range, there’s a lot less stress the forearms and therefore into the wrist. So ways to think about using other tools to pry muscles in the same way that we put these on our legs, do a squat, push out our squats, and we get our glutes to become more active to help the knee and the ankle out. So if you think about the legs and the arms is very similar, not the exact same but very similar, and the tweaks you use for them, you can also use those tweaks through your arms as well. And the last thing we’d like to do, in terms of tweaks, is using a Bosu ball as an as an alternative to a rice bucket. Because I can go into a fist here, now what I have is I have a responsive surface, where I can actually put weight forward into my knuckles, weight back into my finger knuckles, weight to the left, weight to the right, and then kind of an orbital motion or a rotational motion through my wrist. And I get pressured into that. So it’s a bottom up way of getting a push back. And to get feedback into the muscles that allow again more muscle priming, or just we call it activation, right we’re getting more neurological perceptible activation to get those muscles like oh, wait a minute, here I am, I can actually help out and take away stress through the bones. If your wrist is okay, you can go into a an extended position, do the same thing from fingertips to palm, heel, thumb to pinky and then wrapping and then wrapping. I’ll try to make that motion as big as you so you can see through that pattern. So just ways to consider using tools that may be much more available for you in your training and conditioning facility just to give that more help. And no, it’s a small setup. But if you have a risk that’s just bugging you, it can really take away from a lot of your clients or yourselves in your workout in your progress. So hope this video gave you a greater understanding and insight and how you can start to think about your coaching and your training sessions. And for all your moving practices out there and all your athletes out there doing your DUI game. Now, we need to be thinking not where the dysfunction is, but really where it’s coming from. And that will greatly help us tweak and modify to make our workouts much more successful. Hope you found great, great value in this tweak ology series. This is your first time seeing this video, please check out our other videos in this series. We didn’t want on Foot Ankle but didn’t want in the knee. We didn’t want to lower back on the shoulder and also the elbow. So if you want more content from Gymnazo Edu, you can follow Gymnazo Edu on Instagram. You can check out our podcast on all the platforms. You can also follow me Michael Hughes at 3d underscore athlete on Instagram as well. Great job. See you guys next time.
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