Monday, March 26, 2012

Love Those Therapy Putty Hand Exercises...with helpful videos!

Weakness in the muscles of the hand can lead to many problems, such as a poor grasp, and difficulties with coordination and manipulation. That's why it's important to carry out therapy putty hand exercises as frequently as possible if weakness is present.

I love therapy putty, which is also called hand exercise putty. I'm going to share a series of videos with you that show how to carry out various hand exercises using therapy putty. There are different strengths of therapy putty, and you can click on the following links for more information and prices at Amazon.  For a child (or adult) who is quite weak, I would recommend the soft resistance putty. If there is some strength present, go with the medium-soft resistance. For older children, or an adult who has just a bit of weakness, try the medium-firm resistance putty. Most of the students that I work with use the medium-soft resistance.

So what do you do? Let me show you! Let's start with a very basic therapy putty exercise that works on strengthening the finger flexor muscles. As you will see in the video, I basically roll the putty into a "hotdog" shape, then pinch it using my thumb and each of my fingers.

Another exercise that's good for flexion and the other tiny muscles in the hand (as well as coordination) what I call "rolling the ball." Just take a smaller chunk of putty and using the fingers on ONE HAND ONLY, roll the putty into a small ball. The less putty that you have, the smaller the ball will be and the more challenging the task. Whatever you do, don't help out by using the opposite hand or the surface of the table...that's cheating!


I will continue in my next post with more therapy putty hand exercises! :)

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1 comment:

  1. The occupational therapy exercises are very helpful to people. Its helps people to regain their ability and confidence.

    ReplyDelete