The incredible U.S. Open is now in its second week of play. Crowd favorites are number one seeds’ Serena Williams and Novak Djokovic who are still gunning for victory. Unfortunately, one of my favorite players was knocked out early. He had to retire from the tournament with a bad wrist injury. The person that I am talking about is Rafael Nadal.
The wrist is a very important joint, crucial to grabbing and using one’s hands. A painful wrist and/or wrist injury can drastically lower one’s standard of living and ability to perform normal daily activity. Physical Therapy for wrist pain and injury is vital to healing one’s wrist.
With a wrist sprain, wrist tendonitis, or wrist arthritis, physical therapy is necessary to loosen the stiff wrist, relieve pain, and restrengthen the wrist so that it can perform its proper functions.
How To Help A Bad Wrist:
The answer is through care and moderate exercise. What we try to do in Physical therapy for the wrist is increase wrist mobility while also decreasing wrist pain. We want to make the wrist stronger so that it does not get re-injured and can perform the weight and stress bearing activities that it needs too.
One genre of exercises we use is “range of motion” exercises like:
Wrist extension and flexion exercises:
This includes putting your hand on a table over a towel and gently move the hand up and down. This is repeated for several sets. We want to decrease stiffness with this exercise. There are many other exercises we will show you in wrist physical Therapy that strengthen the wrist, relieve pain, and make it so your wrist is capable of a wide range of movements.
Wrist Flexor Stretch and Wrist Extensor Stretch:
These stretches that utilize Queen's physical therapy for the wrist use similar motions but instead of strengthening the surrounding muscles of the wrist, these stretches make the wrist much more flexible.
One does these stretches by gently using one hand to push the wrist upwards and holding the position for 5 seconds until the stretch is felt. The other way is to push the wrist downwards until the stretch is felt for 5 seconds as well. One repeats these motions 10 times for each stretch. If you feel any pain, make sure to tell your physical therapist right away and stop the exercise. All of the above exercises should be first done under the supervision of your physical therapist.
Cross Bay Physical Therapy Office:
Cross Bay Physical Therapy can help you alleviate wrist pain and recover from a wrist injury. Call (718) 835-0084 and schedule an appointment today with one of our trained physical therapists! Our offices are located in Howard Beach, Queens and we are capable of helping patients from the surrounding areas as well such as Lindenwood, Richmond Hill, and Ozone Park.
Physical therapy should be exhausted before doing more severe treatments such as injections and/or surgery. Thank you and have a great day!
By Benjamin Bieber