2 advanced hand exercises for arthritis pain

The stronger your hands, the less pain you will have. Continue working muscles that support arthritic joints with these challenging exercises.

Though it's a curl, this exercise works at a more intense angle than regular curls, isolating muscles of the inner forearm.

• Stand straight with your feet hip-width apart and your knees slightly bent. Grasp a hand weight in each hand, with your arms by your sides and palms facing behind you.
• Bend your wrist to curl your hands behind you as far as comfortably possible.
• Slowly lower your hands to the starting position.
• Before you try this exercise, be sure you can perform the backward-bending wrist movement without resistance (weights) to see if it causes any discomfort in your wrists, elbows or hands.

Though the motion is similar to a wrist rotation, the way you hold the weights in this exercise adds considerably more resistance.

• Sit in a chair and hold a weight in each hand, grasping the weight on one end (not in the middle of the handgrip) with palms facing downward.
• Keeping your wrists straight, turn the weights so your palms are up. Then rotate hands back so your palms face down.
• Start with a lighter weight or start with the lightest weight you have and work upward as your condition allows.