Our wrists and general arm areas take a lot of pressure and movements each day and it is important that we regular stretch these areas throughout the day also undertake some wrist strengthening activities. This is particularly important if you enjoy hobbies such as bowling that require a lot of power and actions from your wrist areas. You can also use a Bowling Wrist Support like the ones you can see at petesproshop.co.uk/acatalog/wrist-supports.htm to further support your wrist during games.
There are in essence four main muscle groups that operate to enable your wrists to move in a number of different ways. These include:
- Wrist Extensors – these work when you move your hand so that the palm is moving away from the forearm
- Wrist Flexors – these work when the hand moves in the opposite direction from the above, so in effect moving the palm of the hand towards the forearm area.
- Supinators – these work when you turn the palms of your hands upwards
- Prontors – these work in opposition to the supinator’s and operate when you turn your palms downwards.
The importance of having strong wrists is due to the amount of pressure and work we expect these areas of our bodies to undertake each day and with weak wrist muscles you can find that even undertake medium impact exercises that you can be susceptible to injuries in your wrists. One of the biggest strains on our wrists in day to day activity is spending vast amounts of time each day sat at the computer typing at the keyboard. The wrists also play an important role in lifting items and bearing weight along with the rest of the upper body.
There are many wrist exercises that you can undertake on a regular basis and here are just a few to give you some ideas and most of them can be completed anywhere, even at your desk.
Wrist circles – these help to stave off any tension in your wrist area from them being in a static position such as over a keyboard for long periods of time. Repeating these ten times on each hand rotating the wrists in both directions will help to keep your wrists supple and mobile.
Wrist flexor and extensor exercise – if you have access to a tennis ball or stress ball of some description at work you can take five minutes out to complete this exercise. You place the tennis ball in one hand and place the forearm of the same arm on the take and then squeeze and ball and count to five before releasing and then repeating ten times. Once you have completed this on one side you can switch to the other hand.
