Name: Playbook - TrickStrong RX - Elbow, Wrist & Hand Mobility
Uploaded: 2025-04-08T19:59:02.041Z
Duration: 45 min
Description: Elbow, Wrist & Hand Mobility

This is a elbow mobility routine complete with a warmup, stability, control exercises, joint work and static stretching. Do this a few times per week if you are feeling limited in your movement due to elbow, wrist or hand stiffness!

Wrist Circles are a low-impact way to warm up your wrists. They are great for improving wrist mobility. Adding the ball grip will further challenge your mobility and forearm endurance. 

Grip a ball while tracing a figure 8 with your fists in one direction. Half way through, trace in the other direction. For example: a 30 second set will be 15 sec in each direction.

A tip to keep track of your circle direction is to see if you are leading the motion with your thumb side or your pinky side of your fist.

Wrist Circles w/ Ball Grip

This is another great mobility exercise for the shoulder girdle and thoracic spine.
 
The shoulder is a 3D ball and socket joint. Our mobility and stability training needs to reflect this for maximum benefit and carryover to functional tasks such as reaching over head or behind our back.
 
For Rotating Angels, start on your stomach with your forehead supported on a firm surface such as a floor, mat or towel. Lift your arms off of the ground with scapular (shoulder blade) engagement. Limit shoulder shrugging as much as possible during this exercise. 

Notice how we rotate the shoulder continuously throughout the movement, achieving a palms up position once our arms raise above our shoulders. In overhead movement, the palms up position prevents impingement & promotes external rotation, or opening of the shoulder.

When below the height of the shoulder, begin to internally rotate the shoulder with the goal of touching the backs of your hands together - all in a pain-free range of motion.

Rotating Angels

Dead hanging is a great drill for so many reasons! It can help improve overhead mobility, lat and pec tightness, upper body and core stability, grip 
strength and can even help decompress the spine. 

To perform this correctly, stay engaged with your grip, core and scapular muscles. When we dead hang without muscular support, we not only miss out on the opportunity to improve overhead stability, we can also irritate our shoulder by hanging our entire body weight on the ligaments and joint capsule. 

Make sure that you stay engaged by squeezing your shoulder blades down and in while squeezing the bar.

It is usually more difficult to hang in a supinated (palms up) position as this position requires more pec and lat mobility. If you can handle it, it can be a great way to improve shoulder, elbow and wrist mobility as well.

Neutral and pronated grips are also useful to train as they stress our upper body and grip differently. Change up your grip angles for best results.

Deadhang - Supinated Grip

Choose either dead hang or overhead pause squat depending on equipment availability and preference. 

Steps to doing this right:

1. take a dowel or broom stick and bring it overhead, palms up. 

2. With core engaged and feet grabbing the floor, descend into your deepest pain-free squat

3. Maintain bottom position for 5 seconds, engaging your shoulder blades to keep your arms overhead.

The overhead squat is an efficient drill to improve mobility in many areas of our body. In order to perform this drill well, we need great shoulder, elbow, wrist mobility, thoracic spine mobility, hip, knee and ankle mobility as well. We also need the ability to coordinate our upper and lower extremities effectively.

These attributes are all extremely useful for us as Tricking athletes as we need tons of overhead mobility, total body coordination as well as the ability to compress through the lower extremity.

Alternative to Deadhang: Overhead Pause Squat

This drill is great for improving our core stability, glute activation, as well as our shoulder, elbow and wrist stability in an extended position. This is a great one to train to improve our upper body pushing strength and coordination, which will translate to our handed skills. In Tricking, this also mimics falling with an outstretched hand, which can be protective against future issues. 

Prop your arms at a comfortable distance directly behind you. Having your fingers pointing backwards will challenge your wrist range of motion and encourage shoulder/chest opening. 

With your core and arms engaged, lift up by driving your hips towards the ceiling. You should feel this push come from your glutes. 

Hold the top position for 3-5 seconds before lowering, "owning" the position at the top of the rep. You should feel stable, while also feeling opening at the front of your shoulders and hips.

Crab Bridge

Quadruped Thoracic Rotations are great for mobility and stability of the thoracic spine and shoulder girdle and should be a staple in your routine. 

Thoracic mobility is extremely important in not only improving neck, shoulder and postural function, but in giving us the space to perform throwing and rotational movements such as touchdown raiz or eagles without limitation.

Begin in the quadruped position, or all fours. We prefer doing this drill banded because it allows us to gain strength and stability within our range of motion and therefore increases carryover of this new mobility. 

Strength throughout our full range of motion is simply safer as it is injury preventative. 

Make sure you choose a tension that is challenging but does not limit your full range of motion.

Quadruped Thoracic Rotations - Banded

Steps to getting this right: 
1. Straighten your elbow
2. Pronate, or flip your palm down 
3. Flex your wrist and pronate further so that your thumb is facing as far out as you can actively. 

Now use your other hand to add over pressure into this direction.

The wrist flexors originate at the medial elbow, and are muscles involved in closing our hands, gripping and pronating. These muscles can get tight or overworked if we are doing a lot of gripping activities or have a muscular imbalance. This can be exacerbated by activities like frequent phone use or typing.

Forearm Flexor Group Stretch

Steps to getting this right:

1. Straighten your elbow 
2. Pronate, or flip your palm down
3. Flex your wrist and pronate further so that your thumb is facing as far out as you can actively. 

Now use your other hand to add over pressure into this direction.



Now use your hand to add over pressure into this direction. 

The wrist extensors originate at the lateral elbow, and are muscles involve in opening our hands, supinating our hands and most importantly help to stabilize the wrist during gripping activities. 

They can also get tight from being in a shortened position all day if you type or use your phone a lot.

These muscles are basically the reigns for the flexors, meaning they have to work even harder to stabilize and check the wrist flexors whenever we grab or throw something. Stretching and strengthening these muscles often is ideal for shoulder, elbow wrist and hand health.

Forearm Extensor Group Stretch

Steps to doing this right:

1. Identify your wrist crease and place a strong band or belt over it. Be sure that this band is on your wrist, not your forearm!

2. Pull the band to tension at a downward 45 degree angle.

3. Lean your body over your wrist while keeping a downward, diagonal band tension. This will create space in your wrist joints. 

4. Try to get further into your pain-free range of motion with each rep.
 
You should do this if you have pinching or block sensation with wrist extension, or if you lack wrist mobility and stretching alone has not improved your range of motion!

The belt is used to stabilize the carpal bones of the wrist so that the forearm (radius, ulna) translates over it and increases joint mobility.

Optional: Banded Wrist Mobilization

Thoracic extension mobility is often restricted due to the forward head, rounded shoulder posture we often assume in the modern day. This can not only make the muscles tight in this region, but the joints of our spine get used to being in a flexed posture as well. 

If this is you, you will feel closed off in the front and tight in the neck and upper back. Tightness in this region can sometimes feel like a stiffness or pinch when we try to extend through the thoracic spine, or upper to mid back. 

The yoga wheel is great for general upper thoracic mobility. Using a weight enhances the mobilization - but don't go too heavy. I'm using a 15 lb KB here. 

I keep my core engaged to focus the movement in my upper back while limiting it in the often-mobile lumbar spine.

Elbow, Wrist & Hand Mobility

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