How to Improve Manual Dexterity (and Why It Matters)
Over the past few months, it has occurred to me that at the respectable age of 30, I lost some manual dexterity. I used to be able to securely hold my iced coffee and my phone in my hand, but these days my mittens are limited to one function at a time – and frankly, I don’t like what that says about my mortality. Fortunately, there are ways to improve dexterity, so let’s all ignore the creeping passage of time and our impending old age and instead focus on helping our hands be the best they can be.
What is dexterity?
Let’s start with the basics. Agility is the ability to perform tasks, especially with the hands. “You need it to carry out daily tasks and respond to everything that happens during the day,” said Sam Vascones, personal trainer from New York.
When you think about how much you do with your hands during the day, from cooking scrambled eggs in the morning to folding laundry in the evening (and everything in between), it becomes clear how important dexterity is in everyday life. Kendra Vander Wahl, an occupational therapist in Colorado, also pointed out that in addition to the necessary activities in your daily life, agility also helps you have fun. You need it, for example, for playing sports or using a remote control or video game controller.
According to Stephanie Weirauch, a physical therapist and vice president of the American Association of Physical Therapists of Connecticut , loss of agility can result from many causes. These causes may include osteoarthritis, stroke, or trauma, but it may also be due to simply misguided propaganda. As an example, she pointed to someone who plays musical instruments in high school: if they stop playing later, they may also have difficulty playing after returning to it again as an adult.
“This means that our brain also has some effect on agility,” she said. “Practice makes progress. The more we use our hands to complete a task, the easier it becomes.”
Vascones noted that lack of flexibility, mobility, or strength can also affect agility.
How to improve dexterity?
For some specific tips on improving agility, we turned to Weirauh and personal trainer Abdias Rojas. “Damn,” Rojas said (very excited), “there are so many moves you can do to improve not only the strength of your arms, but their flexibility.” Here are the ones they recommended:
- Put the rubber bands on your fingers, then stretch and squeeze them. Rojas said this will promote myofascial relaxation “and allow your hands to feel more comfortable.” This video shows how the gum technique is done.
- Perform DIP PROM movements while seated , gently squeezing the tip of the finger at the last joint and slowly bending the finger with the other hand. According to Weihrauch, this can be done every day, 10 times for each finger and 10 seconds for each descent.
- Sitting finger PIP PROM movements , which are performed at the same frequency and duration as described above, involve gently squeezing the finger at the middle joint and then bending each finger at that location with the other hand. (It’s kind of like that.)
- The seated internal multi-finger stretch begins with you sitting upright with your elbow resting on the table. Bend the fingers of one hand, and with the other hand, grasp the middle and upper joints of all fingers. Squeeze your fingers gently until you feel a stretch. Do this 10 times for 10 seconds every day.
- Try wrist tendon sliding by resting your elbow on a table, keeping your fingers straight, and then bending your fingers at the lower knuckles so that your fingers give the impression of a “table”. Straighten them, then flex the lower and middle knuckles, straighten the arm, clench the fist into a fist, straighten again and clench the half-fist before straightening again. Do this daily for two sets of 10 reps each.
- To get a better idea of how much pressure you need to apply when touching things, do hand exercises in the sand . “It sounds strange,” Rojas warned, “but when you do manual exercises in the sandbox, put your hands in a box of sand, you can literally learn to squeeze the sand and understand which joint or which finger is applying more pressure or less pressure.” Try to pinch a ball of plasticine with your thumb, index and middle fingers, keeping your wrist straight.
- Do some opposition , which means you touch your thumb to each individual finger of the same hand, working at different speeds. (This one came from Rojas and Weyrauch, so you know he’s a winner.)
- To enhance your sense of touch, do not wear gloves .
- To improve grip strength, Rojas suggested heavy isolated holds , “where you stand still with a heavy dumbbell or kettlebell . Let’s see if you can use your grip to hold him.
- Rojas said that another option for developing grip strength is forearm training , “because a lot of the muscles in the arms are actually contracted by the muscles in the forearms.”
- To strengthen your wrists, do wrist mobility exercises : “Practice resting on them with your palm down on the floor. Then practice resting on them with the back of your hands on the floor, rolling on them as if you are gaining weight and taking weight off [wrist],” Rojas said.
- Finally, try the seated eccentric wrist extension . Sit up straight with your hand on the table, holding the dumbbell so that your arm hangs over the edge and your palm is facing down. With your other hand, bend your wrist up, lower it, and repeat. Do this in two sets of 20 reps each day.
In addition to exercise, Rojas offered hand massages and even acupuncture. Vascones also suggested that someone who has difficulty managing multiple objects in their hand, for example, should work with a vice and not skimp on forearm training, but “if it’s a mobility issue, you may need to stretch your arm and forearm.” or work on supination and pronation of the arm.” According to Vander Wahl, you can even make it fun: “Leisure activities such as working with clay and putty, spraying water bottles, or cutting with scissors can also help develop dexterity.”
Don’t lose sight of the importance of overall body health when it comes to improving agility. Weirauch pointed out that “without optimal general (which requires wider movements and more muscle groups) and fine motor skills (which require more precision) that make up our manual dexterity, we would be unable to perform” everyday tasks.
If you’re struggling with your agility to a dangerous degree, or exercise alone isn’t helping, consider seeing a healthcare professional or physical therapist. Vander Wahl noted that there are several different assessments that a trained professional can perform, such as with the O’Connor finger dexterity test. Identifying the cause and severity of the problem can help you come up with the best plan for improvement—and quickly get back to using your keys and phone at the same time or score high on a video game.