You probably know that balancing opposing muscle groups and lifts is important. You don’t want to be doing twice the volume of pushing exercises as you are pulling. You don’t want your training to over-emphasize upper body movements and neglect the lower body. A big problem many people have is vastly over-working their anterior delts with all the pressing they do and forgetting about their posterior delts (enter the amazing facepull!)

Similarly, you don’t want to get super strong at the expense of maintaining a healthy weight and body fat level. There’s always an appropriate balance you have to strike with your body and in other areas of your life to stay healthy and keep things running smoothly.

Well, one area where a LOT of people are completely imbalanced is in their hands.

This is also, un-coincidentally, a place that many people complain of having pain. Our hands have an incredible amount of bones, muscles, and nerves and we use them to do almost everything throughout our lives. If there’s one thing you want to take care of, it’s probably the body part that allows you to touch, grasp, pick up, eat, and hold things throughout the day.

Let’s take a moment to appreciate those 10 little digits that give so much to our lives.

Okay, so:

Every time you hold a barbell or dumbbell, perform a pull-up, or swing a kettlebell you are working your flexor muscles. Even typing on a keyboard, writing with a pencil, holding your car steering wheel, playing a guitar, riding a bicycle, and swinging a golf club or baseball bat are movements that require your hands to be in flexion.

Throughout the day and especially if you are weight training you are flexing your hands a lot.

But what about your extensors? They are used much less often. This can lead to imbalances and pain in the forearm and hand.

That’s why it’s a good idea to train your extensors. The easiest way to do this is by expanding your hands with rubber bands or buying something like this which has several bands of varying thickness. You hear about people using these kinds of bands for therapy pre- or post-surgery but why not take advantage of them preemptively even if your hands are healthy?

There are also other brands like this which come with rubber rings to squeeze in addition to the bands to expand.

I can’t speak to the quality of the seconds ones because I personally use the IronMind bands and highly recommend them. In my training I do a lot of grip work, whether it be with actual grippers (once again IronMind shines in this department) or holding onto farmer’s walks, deadlifts, shrugs, etc. and I’ve discovered that lots of heavy hand flexion can cause imbalances and pain.

Now, of course, your flexors are going to be WAY stronger than your extensors. Even if you can farmers walk with 300+ pounds per hand you will probably only be able to open a half-inch wide rubber band with only a few pounds of tension all the way. The goal is not to push this movement but just to work those poor forgotten extensor muscles with several light and controlled opening movements a few times a week. The idea is that this can help tip the scales back a little bit towards muscular balance in the hands.

By simply doing several reps a few times a week with these bands I have alleviated pain in my hands and elbows. Also, if you’re a fidgety ADD type person like me, it’s something fun to do while driving or sitting at a desk at work. (Maybe if marketed correctly, these could become the next fidget spinner-like craze? Who’s with me on that business venture?)

Reading the reviews of the many different band extensors there are online, you can see plenty of people saying they helped alleviate tennis elbow or other similar pains in their forearms and hands.

If you already use a grip trainer often, why not superset these with your grip work or add them in after you’re done with all that hand flexing? It takes a few minutes, can help alleviate pain and imbalances, and can contribute to overall hand health.

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So next time someone ask you how much you bench maybe you should ask, “How much ya finger extensor press…BRO?”