How do I take care of my flexor digitorum superficialis? So glad you asked! I use this Yoga Tune Up® stretch with Roll Model Therapy Balls for self-massage with my teams:
- From table top, spin the shoulder into external rotation and continue that until the fingers are pointing toward your knees. Gently pressing more weight into the palms until you feel the stretch along the forearm. (See Jill’s demonstration of this in the video below – her version also stretches through the muscles of the palm).
- Let’s get rolling: Use a Yoga Tune Up® Therapy Ball in one hand and using pressure, roll it from wrist to elbow on the inside part of your forearm. You may even notice a involuntary curling of the fingers when drawing the ball from wrist to elbow and a release/ extension of the fingers when dragging it from elbow to wrist.
Learn more about hand and wrist pain relief solutions
Watch the QuickFix Hand/Wrist/Elbow Video
Check out the Yoga Tune Up Pose of the Week
Un geste simple mais tellement précieux dans notre socieété de tous les jours. les avants bras sont souvent négligés tout comme les mains. Pourtant ils ont besoin de beaucoup d’amour.
This is a great stretch! I’m a massage therapist and my forearm and hands get so stiff some days. This is very helpful!
As an RMT I’m always using this stretch after a busy day in the clinic, it really does feel great.
I love this exercise and I teach it often in my classes from table pose and introduce in combination with some cat/cow movement with the spine with the wrists in It feels great and its great for many of my students who are coming immediately from work to the studio.
I often take my forearms and wrists for granted until they are hurting. I’ll definitely be looking to get some work in before injury or pain sets in. Thanks for the simple and effective stretch and therapy ball sequence.
Thanks for the great yet simple wrist review!
Thank you for this great information and easy stretch. I just did the stretch and my wrist feels a lot better. Not sure what is causing my wrist pain but this stretch as well as using the balls has really helped.
Linda
Wrist stretches are such a good way to combat internal rotation of the shoulders from hours at the computer. The video is also a great reminder for what to do when your forgot your balls.
I use this as a warm up for my personal training clients. I use this and “piano fingers” to make a mind body connection at the beginning of class or private sessions.
Love this stretch.
And so easy!
As a sufferer of carpel tunnel, it is nice to find something else to help! The video was so helpful. Thank you!
How have I not seen this? I prep my wrists in this position daily for hand balancing or climbing, but never used the active static of peeling the hands off the ground.
This is a class favourite, and I am always still surprised by the incredible level of tightness and tension this exercise reveals each time. Obviously spending way too much time internally rotated and shortened in the extensors. Each time I do this stretch, I realize that my pec minor is also too short and tight, and that my supraspinatis and infraspinatus also react. Thanks for this outlet!
Thank you for this great warm up and cool down for our over used everyday hands and writs, from writting, typing, gardening, assembly line in a factory, and rice field workers, We can all relate to this, as we all use our hands every day , will definitely use this to in my class.
love this stretch, I think this should be taught in schools and any where people use the wrists and forearms alot even if you don’t its still a great exercise.Thanks
Lindsay,
I am custom building some stretches for a Hair salon crew with ABUSE flexor digitorium. In reality, Any body who repetitively blow dry hair, whisk omelet all morning or work on a factory line boxing merchandise for Amazon would truly benefit from this tune-up. I will add this stretch to our routine. Great Direction of movement to start that will be helpful too.
I’ve done similar stretches for these muscles but never like this on the ground. The slow “peeling” of the wrists off the ground really helps me feel the difference in the stretch as the angle of the fingers to the ground changes. Thanks for the new technique!
Thank you for paying attention to some of the most overused and abused muscles in the body. The muscles of the forearm are so important to the health of our hands and fingers, yet they are often ignored. The video and your YTU ball exercise provide some TLC that is greatly needed in my body!
Such a helpful video! I do this pose a lot, but never thought to try roll my hands up. It’s important to do this stretch because it counteracts the internal rotation that we usually spend the most time in throughout our days. Having this extension, even for a few minutes, helps us get a little more balance.
I just did this pose a few hours ago on the wall in my office. My wrists get so tired from typing – especially because we can’t have ergonomic keyboards and mouses (mice?) in our office!
Such a helpful video! I do this pose a lot, but never thought to try roll my hands up. It’s important to do this stretch because it counteracts the internal rotation that we usually spend the most time in throughout our days. Having this extension, even for a few minutes, helps us get a little more balance.
I just did this pose a few hours ago on the wall in my office. My wrists get so tired from typing – especially because we can’t have ergonomic keyboards and mouses in our office!
I have tore ligaments in my left wrist playing basketball in high school and this stretch was a life saver for me to rehab that wrist. I also performed a very similar stretch, from table top internally rotating the shoulders (fingers pointing towards knees) and placing the back of the hands down on the mat and taking the stretch to a comfortable position.
I work with many clients who do manual labor, construction, farming, logging who develop claw-shaped hands and limited range of motion due to repetitive stress in their forearms and hands. I love the idea of using the therapy ball to roll along the length of the forearm and increase proprioception of the connection between the forearm muscles and opening and closing of the hands.
Excellent stretch for climbers but I think once OA has set in more severely that this stretch must be slow and less,intense.
This is so important as we spend much more time with our hands in flexion and not enough extension. I find I like to drape my metacarpals over the toted balls press down on the phalanges and scrub the metacarpals slowly. Any thoughts on doing Jill’s technique in reverse order and slowly pressing into to floor as well?
This is a great stretch for people who do different forms of body work like massage therapists and physical therapists. It will help prevent overuse injuries and keep our hands and wrists healthy. Thanks for the video!
This video is extremely helpful! I sometimes get pain in my wrists, I tried these exercises and it really helped to relieve some of my tension and pain. I am definitely going to incorporate this into some of my classes as a warm up stretch!
Great blog post / video! I don’t have any wrist issues, although I have several students that do so this interested me. It just seems like a good way to prevent and manage conditions like carpal tunnel syndrome. Also helpful for making yoga poses like reverse namaste position more manageable.
I was delighted to see a post that focused specifically on this stretch, as it has always been one of my favorites and I continue to use it every day in my yoga classes as a warm up. There really aren’t many stretches which are employed in yoga classes or elsewhere which target the flexors and extensors of the wrist and hand, but nonetheless I believe it is very important to show this area of our bodies some love, considering how much we use our forearms and hands every day.
Thanks for the post Lindsay!
Great video for anyone that spends a lot of time on the computer. I usually do figure 8s (clasping my fingers and circling wrists) but this video is a new stretch for my hands and wrists.