How to take care of your hands.
Hands never get the attention they deserve in massage therapy. We use them all the time for literally everything and sometimes we get all kinds of trouble after years and years of using them!
Most people are not too familiar with the hand, wrist & arm in particular because you typically don’t encounter any issues with them unless you have an injury or develop a Repetitive Strain Issue typically in your thirties or forties. One of the best ways to prevent problems in your hands is by taking good care of them before you develop any kind of issues because at that point you will also be fighting against daily activities which would slow healing & improvements.
So how do you take care of your hands in the best way possible? No matter if you’re a tradie, an office worker, a pole dancer, massage therapist or anything inbetween…the principles are the same, so let’s have a look.
You have heaps happening in your hands, plenty of bones, ligaments, nerves, muscles & tendons & all kinds of fascia just spread out and they each like different things.
For your bones & ligaments you want to use ice & cold therapy and make sure your diet is in check with plenty of calcium/joint supplements. These structures are quite rigid & will benefit from the cold to reduce any pain & swelling.
For your muscles, tendons & fascia you will want to use heat & stretching. A great way to get both hot & cold therapy in is by utilizing a bucket of ice water & a bucket of hot water (Not boiling…) The prolonged heat therapy will penetrate into your muscles & fascia allowing them to become more pliable and more relaxed. Once you have applied a bit of heat & put some circulation into the muscles you can begin to stretch them. Most of the muscles in the hand require the stretching of the flexors/extensors of the wrist & forearms.
Part of your Remedial Massage is being taught stretches if you wish to receive them and there are tonnes to go through for the hands & forearms!
The 3 best stretches for the hand, wrist & forearm would be …
Carpal Tunnel Stretch
Flexor Wall Stretch
Wrist Extensor Stretch
Since it’s so difficult to explain a stretch through text… here’s a video which includes all of the above & variations with exercises to help you out!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL_Akx18sSM&ab_channel=Goodful
There really is no limit on the stretching here but you want to make sure you’re stretching after things are warmed up and not before or first thing in the morning because this is when you’ll experience more restrictions as opposed to when you have already loosened up.
If you have already developed serious pain & weakness in your wrist & arms, that’s when you’ll want to see a physio for a thorough investigation into what’s happening for you but for the run of the mill stuff, you can relieve quite a bit of tension on your own.
If you don’t feel like stretching & want someone else to just massage and stretch your hands, I’m here for that during your Remedial Massage.
