Intermediate hand and wrist exercises for arthritis

You can find relief from the pain of arthritis by building up the muscles that support your arthritic joints, such as your wrists and hands. These intermediate-level exercises will build on your existing strength and help you move on to more challenging ones.

Performed like basic wrist curls, this exercise is significantly more difficult with hand weights.

1. Sit in a chair holding a weight in each hand, with your forearms resting on your thighs and your hands extended off your knee with your palms facing upward. Relax your hands, allowing the weights to move toward the floor. This is your starting position.
2. Roll your fingers to bring the weights comfortably into your hands. Slowly bend your wrists to bring the weights toward the ceiling as far as is comfortably possible.
3. Slowly lower the weights back to the starting position for one repetition.

Tip: If you find it difficult to lift both weights together, start by doing alternating curls.

Here, too, the adding of hand weights makes this simple motion an exercise with added intensity.

1. Sit in a chair and hold a weight in each hand, with forearms resting on your thighs and your hands extended over your knee with your palms facing the floor. Relax your wrists so the weights are resting against the upper part of your shins.
2. Bending at the wrists, lift the weights upward as far as comfortably possible.
3. Slowly lower your hands to the starting position and repeat.

Tip: As with wrist curls, if you find it difficult to lift both weights together, start by alternating hands.

Performed with hand weights, this exercise is more intense than the version without weights.

1. Sit in a chair and hold a weight in each hand, forearms resting on your thighs, with palms facing downward and feet flat on the floor about hip-width apart.
2. Keeping your wrists straight, turn your fists so your palms are up, then turn them back so your palms are down again for one repetition.

Tip: If your weights tend to strike each other or get in each other's way, place your feet slightly farther apart to create more space between your knees.