The 7 Essential Hand Exercises for Early Active Range of Motion

These 7 exercises are the essential home hand exercises that you should be doing while waiting for your first hand therapy appointment. These exercises will help speed up your recovery and optimize your results after an injury or hand surgery, and they'll help prevent your hand and fingers from getting stiff and frozen. These only apply if you've been instructed by your surgeon to start early active motion, and these are not a substitute for hand therapy. For optimal results, you definitely should still go see your hand therapist as prescribed.

The essential hand exercises can be broken down into seven basic motions:

1.         Fully straighten out your fingers and make them as flat as a table. You might have to use your other hand to help pull your fingers fully straight.

2.         Cat claw or hook: Try to bend your second and third row of knuckles at each finger. Again, you may need to use your other hand to push and hold your fingers until they can reach this hook shape.

3.         Tabletop or upside-down L: Where you're trying to bend your first knuckles while keeping your second and third knuckles straight.

4.         Make a full fist: Combine the last two exercises. Here, you're trying to reach your fingertips all the way down to the line in your palm, ideally trying to make a sharp corner at your first, second, and preferably third knuckles.

5.         Spread your fingers apart and back together.

6.        Thumb exercises: Try to do a full thumbs up and then reach your thumb all the way across your hand and try to scratch the base of your pinky finger using the tip of your thumb.

7.         Wrist exercises: Move your wrist back and forth while relaxing your fingers. Your fingers should naturally curl on their own as you move your wrist back and forth.

Other tips:

• It may be helpful to do these exercises with your hand above your heart to help prevent your hand from getting too swollen.

• I recommend starting off doing these exercises 4x daily. As you become more comfortable, increase to at least once per hour, and your results will be better if you can do these more often, for example, during every commercial break while watching TV.

• Remember to press and hold each pose for at least several minutes at a time. If your fingers are particularly stiff, you may end up needing to hold them for 20 to 30 minutes at a time to get a useful stretch.

• No pain, no gain. If your fingers don't hurt while you're performing these exercises, it means you're not stretching your fingers. There should be some amount of pain, but it shouldn't be excruciating. Aim for a 3/10 to 4/10 on the pain scale.

If you're able to do these seven basic exercises: straightening your fingers, the cat claw or hook, the tabletop, the full combined fist, spreading your fingers apart and back together, a full thumbs up, and scratching the base of your pinky finger, and moving your wrist back and forth while curling and relaxing your fingers, then you'll have a quicker recovery and better overall results after your injury or surgery.

As always, contact your surgeon if you have any questions about your rehabilitation program and if these exercises are right for you to perform.