Typing, text-messaging, playing sports, and even cooking and driving can wreak havoc on the small muscles of your fingers, wrists and forearms. Eventually, the wear and tear may lead to soreness or more serious conditions like carpal tunnel syndrome. Stretching and exercise designed to strengthen these areas can help prevent injury and speed recovery when damage does occur. Using a squeeze grip ball for hand and forearm exercises is an effective and cost-efficient way to keep you working pain-free.
Tennis Ball
Tennis elbow is a condition of intense pain at the outside of the elbow, where all the forearm muscles merge into narrow tendons that join the bone at the joint, says the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma. Tennis elbow doesn't just happen to tennis players, but can result from any repetitive stress or overuse of the forearm and elbow, including rowing, factory line work, or typing at a desk of inappropriate height. After a program of rest and ice to allow the damage to heal, stretching and strengthening exercises will help prevent future injury. Hold an ordinary tennis ball in the palm of the hand, the Nicholas Institute recommends, and squeeze it 25 times. After a brief rest, repeat this set of 25 squeezes two additional times. This exercise can be ongoing, even after recovery, as it is easy to do three times a day at your desk.
Gel Grip Ball
Gel-filled stress balls are available very inexpensively from general merchandise vendors and sports supply stores. Online retailers like Amazon sell gel stress balls from several manufacturers, some of which come in a color-coded array of different resistance levels, for under $10. Strengthening the fingers with daily exercise with a stress ball may help prevent "BlackBerry Thumb," an overstress injury caused by too much text-messaging, advises the Rochester Institute of Technology's National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Don't limit yourself to crushing the ball with your whole hand, suggests GripFAQ.com, an online hand and forearm exercise information resource. Roll the ball against a table with the palm flat and parallel to the table surface; pinch the ball between the thumb and each individual finger; or twist the ball between your two hands.
Bean Bag Balls
Bean bag stress balls, roughly 2 inches in diameter and made of leather or cloth, are commonly distributed as vendor promotion items or sold at craft fairs for use in kicking and juggling games. But exercise with these bean bag balls is also effective for relieving stress, advises HealthGuidance.org, an online membership health information resource. Bean bag stress balls are harder than gel-filled balls, so squeezing them will increase strength but may not improve motion and flexibility. However, the stress relief from hand motion, and from creating the unique grating noise of crushing the bean-like filling, can lead to positive anxiety reduction.
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