Grip strength is essential for us in our day-to-day life. Without adequate grip strength, you can’t perform basic tasks such as opening a doorknob, dressing yourself, or opening a container lid. Thus, grip strength is vital for both sportspersons and common people.
After certain diseases and conditions, including arthritis, hand injury, and stroke, patients start losing their holding ability. In these cases, hand therapy effectively helps them. Ball exercise is one of the affordable and effective hand strengthening exercises. Physiotherapists often recommend their patients grab a set of hand therapy balls and do some exercise. These therapeutic balls come in multiple thicknesses so the patient can keep themselves consistently challenged. These challenges or resistance help you build the hand muscles and stimulate muscle fibers growth. The soft silicone therapeutic balls enhance grip strength and develop hand coordination and agility.
Ball therapy increases neuroplasticity which is essential for stroke patients. Consistent practicing of ball exercise stimulates your brain and promotes the ability to regain its learning ability.
Effective Hand Therapy Ball Exercise to Enhance your Grip Strength
Power Grip
This hand therapy ball exercise will help you strengthen your grip. Power grip is the approach of easier to hold objects, pick them up and release them. Holding a ball tightly will target the flexor muscle to boost the ability to pick any object. It is also necessary to practice releasing the ball, which targets the extensor muscles. This power grip exercise effectively relieves joint pain, stress, and anxiety.
To perform power grip exercise:
- Squeeze a therapy ball with your thumb and finger.
- Concentrate on pressing the pads and tips of your fingers into that ball.
- Choose a therapeutic ball with a specific thickness that gives you enough challenge.
Pinch
Pinching is an excellent step to strengthen your fingertips and thumb. Pinch a ball with your fingers and thumb. Press all of your fingers down into the top of the ball and keep your thumb in upward direction. With this pinching exercise, your finger joints and thumb experience enough challenge, making them firm and flexible.
Thumb Extension
Roll your ball up and down by your palm by making your thumb a little bent, known as thumb flexing, and stretching them by keeping your thumb straight. This technique will move your ball up and down, and your hand will remain in a linear motion.
Table roll
Roll the ball from the fingertip to the palm. Table roll hand therapy exercise mainly focused on hand coordination. It does not work much on boosting grip strength. Take a hand therapy ball, place it on the table, and hold your hand on its top. First, keep your hand in a flat position, roll the ball from the base of your palm up to the tips of your fingers.
Putting excessive or inadequate pressure will make the ball difficult to move. Thus, you have to put a moderate pressure range to make the table roll fruitful for your hands.
Finger Flexion
It is different from power grip exercise Here, and you don’t have to use the thumb; only fingers will be applicable.
Take a silicone ball or foam ball in your palm and press it using all of your fingers except your thumb. Press and release simultaneously.
Make it more challenging to squeeze without using your thumb and increase ball density. Finger flexion effectively strengthens the finger muscles, which increases the fingers’ range of motion.
Thumb Roll
This hand therapy exercise is specifically designed to strengthen your thumb and increase its range of motion. As a result, it will prevent finger stiffness and boost more control.
Here you have to use your thumb to roll the ball in a circular motion on your palm. It is more about improving thumb dexterity and fine motor skill.
Thumb opposition
Start the thumb opposition exercise by placing a foam ball on your palm and using your thumb to hold it in place. Then. Use your fingers to move the ball from left to right. This exercise is perfect for finger coordination and agility.
Benefits of hand therapy ball exercises
It’s essential to cater your hand treatment activities to suit your recuperation objectives. Ball exercise in the form of hand therapy strengthens your hands, fingers, and thumb and improves dexterity, coordination, and range of motion.
Squegg assists their patients to develop Grip strength
We help our patients for grip strengthening as recovery exercise for hand and upper extremity complications with our Squegg. It is specially designed for functional use and helps to not only improve but also assess the grip strength at the same time.