Your hands and fingers were designed for freedom of movement for countless physical tasks. But recently, societies are becoming more and more prone to hand, wrist, and elbow injuries. You could say it is from weight training, family genetics, or a stupid injury from when you were young. While all of those still may be true, I bet you forgot to look at one of the most prominent things you do each and every day today. Do you realize what it is yet? I’ll give you some hints.
You use it for things such as;
- An alarm clock
- Listening to music
- Playing Candy Crush
- Making calls to family, friends, or clients
- Pretending to be busy
- Scrolling social media
- Catching up on the latest news
- Your best camera
- Reading this article (probably)
- Sports, Fashion, Pop Culture updates
- Buying irrational shit on Amazon…
and the list continues all day, every day.
Nowadays, most people are hooked to their phones from rising until slumber, mainly because it can solve or aid so many questions, problems, conversations, passions, and pleasures; can someone say magic genie lamp?
On top of the handy-dandy help, we find we need from phones, the fact it remains in your hand or pocket for nearly the entire day is why you have tight wrists, and fingers. They are tight into a fist-like grip for hours at a time, without being counteracted. Your body is intelligent and adapts to the stress and stimulus places upon it; meaning it will find the easiest way possible to keep doing what you consistently want it to do. So, that means if you are training the body to hold an iPhone, and neglecting training for your hands to stretch open wide, wrist rotations, and elbow greasing, there is going to be an imbalance.
“Smartphones — they’re small. They’re not really ergonomically designed to be doing repetitive actions for protracted periods of time,” – Dr. Steven S. Yang, NYU Langone Medical Center – Hand & Wrist Specialist
The body likes balance and regulation, and by tossing it out of balance, or ‘homeostasis’, you break down its defense system, which is your bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Now, with the structures being out of balance, there is a compromise in optimal movement and function at that joint. Without having the ability to exercise a joints natural and preferred range of motion, you develop a movement pattern dysfunction.
Now, with non-deal joint mechanics, every twist, grab, pluck, turn, push, or hold with your hands are promoting moving as if you keep racing a car that has one flat tire on it; out of sync performance, with a large potential to damage your chassis and performance parts, with a long time up in the garage to get it fixed. And in this case, the garage for you could mean consistent Physical Therapy, Chiropractor, a visit to an Orthopedist or even worse (hopefully not)!
This is a trend that needs to be stopped dead in its tracks!
Right now, you can get started combating hand, wrist, and elbow discomfort or dysfunction by simply letting go of everything and just shaking it out! It only takes a minute or two and is a great way to break phone typing or phone calls. A little bit of movement sprinkled into your day can make a large impact on your overall health and wellness, the perfect time is now! Seriously, see what I mean below…
On top of that shaking (0:25), you can skip ahead and follow some of the other movements I covered in the video such as:
- Interlocked Figure 8’s (0:58)
- Finger Mirroring Drills (2:00)
- T.V. Remote & O.K. hands (4:10)
- Open Palm All 4’s (6:02)
I recommend concluding each ‘hand release’ session with your hands open, palms up, and relaxed… Notice how at first, they still remain in a half-fist. The goal in time is for them to instantly relax into a nice, widespread palm in an instant. Along the way, there is still progress being made if you can’t see or feel the differences right away. It is like investing in your bank account or 401k. It will take some time to accumulate positive changes, but once you realize how big of a change there really is, you will be happy you decided to invest that little bit of extra currency [time] every now and again.
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