 Hello everybody, today we're talking about hand and thumb pain or like palm pain during your pushups. So this one is pretty rare, but if you're watching it, you probably have gotten it. I've actually had this as well because I've had pain in every part of my body at some point or another, but it's all transient, so it's fine. If you haven't yet, first watch the videos that I made the last couple days over shoulder pain, elbow pain, and wrist pain during your pushup because this is the same kind of issue. I need to address it the same way. So when I see somebody with pain further away, outside like the peripheries of their body, I first have to think what could be happening near the center of them that could be causing these issues. So if I have a problem here in my rib cage, it just gets amplified as it goes on down this way or it can get amplified. So the reason that hand and wrist pain doesn't happen quite as often is because it gives us, we have more degrees of freedom to correct the issue that we might have in the midsection core area. So those other videos, the ones on the shoulder, on the elbow, sorry, it's spring time out here. The ones on the shoulder, the elbow, the wrist, those all go over some of those more proximal fixes that we need to look into. Specifically, the video that I made about the elbow, the problems are very similar. Generally what happens is you have some sort of extra torque, different starting positions of your rib cage, believe it or not, one lung can be chronically more inflated than the other lung. And actually it's very, very common, but that also dictates that we behave and we move in different ways. So to kind of give you the short version of all that, first I need to make sure that I can round my back fully. I need to make sure that I can get my rib cage to round out. Generally what happens is the upper back flattens out, looks like this. So you see, I have a rounding, but it's mostly occurring in the middle of my back and the areas above and below it are pretty flat. It kind of looks more like a hinge and less like a slinky. If I do it this way, you see my curve is a little more gradual, okay? So this is considered more optimal. This is really subtle. I don't think I've actually done it this way yet in the previous 220-something videos, but this is a good explanation of spinal position and what we're looking for. So if I can get this gradual rounding of my upper back and if I can move around in that position, if I can use my arms, if I can reach, if I can row, if I can push, if I can pull, then that makes me reasonably certain that I'm going to be able to hang onto that position as I start working out or as I'm in this case doing push-ups. So the first thing to eliminate any twisting, torquing that I have going into my wrist and hand is I need to restore the rounding of my upper back. Now after I restore it, then I need to load it, okay? Sometimes those things can happen simultaneously. Sometimes all you need is if you're doing a plank, you just need to say, exhale all the way, tuck your hips around your back out and then from there, I can kind of just have it right away. In general, I'm trying to cue things first because I can fix them quicker that way. If it doesn't work that way, then we need to make modifications and we need to try something else. So if your push-ups are what's hurting you, maybe take out the shoulder and the elbow part of it and just do a plank. And if that pressure right there is still too much, maybe come down to your elbows. Try it from there. And if that pressure is still too much, don't even load your hands. Just lay on your back. Try to round your back from here. It's the same position, it's just you're interacting with gravity much, much differently. I hope you're getting the theme here, the rounding that position. That is very, very, very important and it's the first step. Now if you're having issues on one side but not on the other, then you probably have some extra steps that you need to go into. In general, ooh, this is just a difficult topic to address. In general, because of where your organs sit, the left lung holds more air and the right lung gets rid of the air. So generally you see a right shoulder that's lower than a left shoulder, but also generally you can see hypertonicity in both necks just for different reasons. So what I'm trying to do then is we go back to that elbow pain video that I made and we talk about getting the air out of the left lung, trying out some side plank variations, making sure we're emphasizing this outer lower abdominal muscle on the left side to help get the air out of there. From there, ooh man, we're just going to keep going. This is the hard one, you guys. From there, if I can restore that position, there could still be stuff going on. And this problem, you know I'm alluding to it, it's difficult. You need a physical therapist, you shouldn't be looking on the internet for this. But I understand because I've had a lot of people come to me and say, you know, I've tried four different physical therapists and none of them helped me. Well, one, maybe your problem is not a physical therapy problem, make sure you talk to your doctor. Two, I'm sorry, hopefully you can find another one. Maybe if I know someone, you can leave a comment and I can connect you. Okay, recap, rounding, get that, load it, yes. So now I have more ability. From there, we talked about modifying the exercise if you have to. We talked about reaching and rowing from there to load yourself in those positions. Now, then we talked about getting the air out of one side and into the other by nature of that. And that helps take some more of the asymmetries that you have in your midsection in your core area and shore them up. Sometimes you'll fix those though and things will still not be better. So then I got to start looking more distally, I got to start getting away from, sorry if I hit that mic, I got to get away from the midsection area and I got to start going outside. So if it's not the rib, if I've cleaned up the rib cage and it looks fine, then I need to go to the shoulder blade and see what the shoulder blades do. So sometimes the shoulder blade is still like out of position or it can't hold itself in a position to where I can, I can keep things not so twisted and torqued. Why did it get out of position in the first place generally? It's the rib cage. And that's why we clear that up first because sometimes we clear that up, everything else just fixes itself. But sometimes you fix it and it doesn't fix itself. So you got to look at other stuff. In general, if I have a lot of air in my left lung and not a lot of air in my right lung, feel free to flip these if you feel like you're the other way. I will say pretty much nobody is, but some people are. If I need to retrain that in a next step, if I need to go into the shoulder blade. So now I'm getting away from the left ab and I'm getting away from that center stuff. And I need to get into shoulder blade muscles specifically. If I don't have air in the right lung, I need things to pull air into it. There's some muscles on the backside of your shoulder blade that help pull it back and around. You want to look into those. You want to get rowing muscles that will help you out there. And then to get air out of the left side to keep you over there. You need to get some, I'm trying not to just use the anatomy terms. You need to get some reaching muscles. You need to get your, my favorite muscle, the serratus anterior because that'll help further get your abs, get your exhale and secure you as you train this rowing position. Left low trap, left serratus, right trap. What else can we talk about? We can also talk about not just rowing, but even using your tricep muscle. Oh man, it is shortening that illness cramped. Even using your tricep muscle to help pull your shoulder back like this. So that's going to further open up that lung and help secure you there. And not only that, but it's going to give you some more stability at that shoulder, at that right shoulder. And again, feel free to flip stuff if you feel like you need to do whatever works. I think we've talked about pretty much everything I would ever want to talk about. Other things, if you're really stiff when you try to bring your hands up, and maybe you can only bring them to here, maybe even to here, you want them to go about 180 degrees. So it might behoove you to do some hanging, but not do some just hanging, but do some hanging with a nice round upper back. And then one other thing that you could do, if your right shoulder is really tonic, if it feels really tight all the time, you got to get, you could do some hanging only on that side, or you can do some pressing, reaching exercises only on that side. The key here is to make sure that when you're pushing, you're not pushing with like a bench press, you're not pushing with your pec muscles. You're pushing your whole body away and your arm gets really, really long and it even comes away from your body. That will turn on that armpit muscle that I love so much and it will help stabilize you. Now, one last to go back to recap the emphasis. I spent like the second half of this video talking about shoulder blade stuff, but I need to reiterate. You need to do the rib cage stuff. First and foremost, it's very important that you address it that way because you won't be able to get the shoulder blade muscles if you don't have the rib cage position first. So clear that up and good luck with your wrist and your hand stuff. If you need help, let's try to find you a PT.