BEST 5 Ways to Treat FINGER STIFFNESS after an Injury

Today I'm going to talk to you about five ways to get that stubborn finger moving again. Say you've had a finger fracture or you had a trigger finger or you had a finger sprain or dislocation and you're healed. Don't want to do these if you're not healed, but if you're good to go and you just can't get that little bit of motion back, stay tuned. Tip number one, use heat. A lot of people think that they should just be using cold after an injury and cold is okay, but you really want to use moist heat. Fill up your sink with warm water and do some gentle exercises in that sink. Or if you have a rice bag that you can throw in the microwave, do that and put that in there for 60 to 90 seconds and do the heat before you start moving to help loosen it up. Tip number two is move. Many times people just want to go right into trying to make a fist and that's all they're working on. You actually want to work the little joints in the finger. So by doing that is you start by doing joint blocking exercises and you want to bend and move just the tip of the finger by itself and get that joint moving. Then you want to go down to the next joint right below the crease and you want to do that joint then bending and straightening as far as you can go. And you want to make sure you straighten all the way and you bend all the way, not just doing this because that's probably all you have. And if you only stay in that range, you're not going to see a benefit. So go all the way straight and all the way bent. Then you want to do both those together in what's called a hook or a claw fist. And again, you'll want to do about 10 to 20 of these, but do them a couple times a day. And after those feel pretty loose, then try to go down into that full fist. And often that will feel better than just trying to go right into a fist from the get-go. Tip number three is passive stretching. Stretch the finger out. So if you can only actively curl down to say here, so say it's my index finger and I can't get it all the way down into the palm. Take your other hand, make a C with your other hand and tuck that finger in to the palm. So I'll show you, I'll show you on my small finger. So I can't curl my small finger all the way down. Make a C with the other hand, put the thumb on the tip of the finger and then the index finger on the top of the joint of the next middle joint there and then stretch down and tuck into your palm. So by doing that, you're stretching all the way and you're stretching all three joints. If you just do this, especially with the small finger, look what happens. If you're just, often people just try to cram those fingers in and they're not giving the fingers their individual attention that they need. And when you're just doing this, you're not working on that tuck that you need and tuck. So by doing that good tuck and that passive stretch, you can help get those fingers curled all the way into your palm. Now tip number four includes buddy taping your stiff finger next to your better moving finger. So I've got this buddy strap here and you, if you don't have a buddy strap, um, you can use tape or Coban. I love the buddy straps though, because you don't constantly have to put tape on your fingers and this has Velcro. So it sticks together pretty well. So saying my index finger is the stiff finger. Um, but my middle finger is working good. You put the hoop on the middle finger and then you buddy the index finger next to it. And then you use this throughout the day. So you're grasping things, carrying things, opening things might be a little difficult with typing. So you can take it off for that. But this is encouraging movement because usually when we have a finger that doesn't move very well, especially the index or the middle finger, we have a tendency just to kind of leave that finger out. And that encourages that stiffness throughout the day. So make yourself use that finger by buddy taping it next to the better moving finger. Tip number five is now to continue to use this buddy strap or the tape. You can also use tape, but we're going to do what's called a low load, long stretch. This is really good. If you have had an injury and stiffness in the finger for quite a while. So say it's been several weeks or several months and you have not been able to get that little bit of motion back. You usually need to do a low load, long stretch, which means you need to do it for a longer length of time. And it's not as aggressive though, as where you might kind of crank it in for a short period of time. So the tissue and the capsule and the finger joints will respond better. If you do a little bit gentler stretch, but for a longer length of time. So you put the strap on the finger. So see how there's a circle here. You actually put it on the stiff finger and then all the way to the bottom. And then what you do is you want to curl that finger, like as much as you can. So say you can only get to like, you know, about, about like here, you take that strap and you come around now and you pull and you're trying to pull that joint as a far as you can. So you're trying to pull actually both joints down to get a good stretch as far as you can go wrapping around. And then there's Velcro on this. So it actually will stick. Now you can also do this with tape, like I said, or with co-band. But again, I like using the strap because you're not getting adhesive on your finger and you're not having to like, if you have hair on the finger, that might hurt a little bit. But I like using the strap because you can use it more often. You would hold this for about five minutes, working up to six minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes. And you should notice that the finger starts slowly stretching out more and more. And you'd want to do this a couple of times a day. Once you take this off, don't be alarmed. Your finger's going to hurt trying to go in the opposite direction. Cause if you, especially if you've been like this for 15 minutes, your finger is not going to want to go straight. It's going to be very sore. If you need to go back in the sink into warm water, loosen it up a little bit more that way, but you should notice then that that's helped to loosen up your joint. So that was five tips to help get that stubborn motion back in that finger. I hope that helped you comment below. Let me know if that did help you like this video and subscribe to virtual hand care. If you're having a hard time getting motion in that stubborn finger, or say you have a lot of swelling or you have a hand injury, a wrist or elbow or a shoulder injury that is just being stubborn. And you can't figure out a way to help that. You can go to virtualhandcare.com and book a session with me. I'd love to help you out. We use our hands all the time and I know how important they are to you. And I'd love to help you out. Thanks for watching.