Improve Grip Strength/Stability

Hello, everybody. My name is Niedra, and this is a tutorial for grip, strength, and upper body upper body stability and strength. A lot of people, clients I've had will talk about when they take weight on their hands, the wrists hurt, and they feel vulnerable. And I have found that first of all, there is a weakness in this whole area. But also tightness in the shoulder. And as women, we often don't understand how to connect into our lats and the big muscles of the trunk, and they're not fully developed. So this tutorial will address all of that.

Also, you will want two balls. You know, these are laundry balls from Trader Joe's. You can use tennis balls, anything, roll up a towel, something, and a stick of some sort. The first one is grip strength which means the ability to grip. So just take the balls and when you're watching television or hanging out, all you do is squeeze them and you will turn on all the little tiny muscles in our hands. I mean, all of us, we work on computers all day long with cell phone, but we're not actually building strength.

Notice also that I'm not necessarily bending a lot in the wrist. And if you look at the shape of your hand, different people have different finger development and you want to see if you can get this line straight as much as possible. Now as you're pulsing, you can also do wrist curls in, this will work into the forearm and also back. So this is focused directly into all the muscle structure around the area. Just play around.

It's also great for stress reduction. Then take a stick, anything, just improvise and you want the arms up and you want to start rolling it. So I'm rolling it up and you will again start to feel all these muscles in the forearm and in the hand working. Now you can reverse. I'm rolling it downwards.

So I'm starting up, going down. And my forearm is already getting tired. And some of you will know that these kind of sticks in Pilates students often have a string and a weight on them. So that's how you up the intensity of the work. Very, very good for the hands and the arms and the grip of the wrist. It just gets you nice and strong.

The other simple thing you can do as you're standing in line at the supermarket and waiting is finger curls into the palm. All of this is just turning on the hand and using it in a functional a not so usual way and you may find one or two fingers kind of what? What? How do I do that? But fun to do. Now taking weight on the hands.

You want to check that the wrists are mobile. So I am placing my hands down and starting to rock forward and backwards. On the hands, taking more weight, taking less weight. Back and forth and also rolling around in both directions. All of this is beginning to get your hand used to weight bearing.

And the opposite of this is the other way. If you turn your hands back, bring the fingers down, I recommend close to your knees first time, and rock forward, you may be amazed at what a stretch this can give you and then slowly peel the hand off. So you're pressing into the hand and rocking back. If your hand is stiff, keep the hands close to you. For flexible people, take the hands further away. I do this every day for quite a few years now.

So I'm super flexible and I love stretching out all this inside out ability in my hands. Then we stretch the back of the hand, press the palm down, spread your fingers, pray to god and try to stretch the hands out. Very intense, very, very intense, very important stretch because honestly, who stretches the hands? Only like crazy people, gymnasts and hand balancers, and you and me. Also curl the hands in and out. To open up all the energy in the fingers. Shake your hands out.

And now I'm making fists and I'm taking my weight on them. So I'm rocking forward and backwards. I hope you can see now I'm starting to use strength and then spread the palm out and pop up. Spread and pop. Spread and pop. Spread and pop.

Spread and pop. And the other part is up, up, up, And then rocking across all the digits of the of the fingers. Lots and lots of interesting fascia that you'll be stretching out and opening up. Now, also, you want finger Remember the grip of the balls, you want to do finger push ups into spider fingers. So I'm popping up and lifting. I'm contracting my whole hand, contracting So just doing this little sequence is going to surprisingly increase your dexterity and your functionality in the hand and back. So we dealt with just waking up the hands Now we want to stretch the shoulders.

So most of the time if people lift their hand, they're often very, they tighten the shoulder, and they don't have full range of motion. And we want to be able to get the hand exactly above the shoulder without popping the shoulder because that's not a real lift. It's just a real relocation of the rib cage. But for now, the focus is into the armpit. So remember those little spider fingers. Get your spider fingers set.

Walk your knees back. And start bringing your head down and just hanging out here. Some of you may not get to the floor. It doesn't matter you want to stretch. You're looking to stretch out the shoulders, stretch out the armpits, stretch out the side of the ribs and you want to stay here for good thirty, forty seconds and start to open up this area. If you are a flexible type, you will hang out there and have fun.

You can put your hands on a yoga block and have a deeper stretch. If you're stiff, you need this, please do this. It's going to change your life. Now, the other thing is strength in the area of this mobility. So if you're sitting and you have a sense of a straight spine with the integrity of core. Take one hand and just put it on your ribs.

So you can feel that the ribs are down. Once you feel your ribs, take the other hand up. So if you notice what this hand is blocking the tendency to do that. So you go wherever you can. Maybe this is your range of motion.

It doesn't matter. You find your limit. And then you want to start pulsing back because this is turning on the muscles that you want, the deltoid muscles, the shoulder muscles, and you want them to start working. You want them to really Be able to carry the load of the arm into a more vertical place, very important because it's gonna save your hands and your wrists. So I'll do this with the other side.

My ribs are down. My hand goes up. I feel where my end range is, and then I'm pushing into it. And I can feel my whole shoulder waking up and firing. Very, very important. Now from here, shoulder shrugs.

So you notice I'm not seesaw in my ribcage. I'm working my shoulders. You're really isolating the shoulders into the lats. Your next phase of that is on your hands and knees. Show to shrug is I'm not doing this.

I'm isolating, squeezing your shoulder blades spreading. Once you've warmed up and become very familiar with that movement, now you're going to take weight. You're going to get used to taking weight into the shoulders. So you just back and forth Taking weight. A lot of the pain is you're literally not familiar to being on top of your hands.

Then you're going to add and lift your knees. So now we're keep building the amount of pressure into the hands to get the whole ribcage connected so you should be feeling your ribcage and your lats working a lot and the shoulders, not just the wrist. And then, of course, once we've gotten nice and stable, you want to find a nice long, stable trunk, go back into your plank, engage your core, and do the same movement in a plank or balanced control front. So guess what? You worked your hands, you worked your shoulders, you worked your legs, You should be feeling pretty powerful in your upper body. Do this often if you want to really resolve delicacy in the wrist and enjoy.