seeking advice!

[niqaeli]

Anyone have any suggestions or experience with unfucking your flexors/extensors with tools and no second person?

The thing is, I've lost a lot of flexibiity in my wrists and I'm honestly at a loss for how to go about addressing it -- there isn't really any convenient way to foam roller them without having someone else doing it for me? And stretching is, eh, long story but, most of the stretches people give for the wrists are not helpful for me.

I'm pretty sure mostly I just need to break up the adhesions accumulated from years of doing massage without worrying about what it was doing to my flexibility (yes, that was foolish, I was a) young and b) very justifiably more pressed about other things when it came to my practice). But I've been stumped for how to actually DO this for myself without assistance and I cannot, sadly, afford to get a massage for myself every other day. *wry*

Comments

[wpadmirer]

What about those bands that you can tie off at one end and then pull on? I would think you could find a way to pull on those and roll your wrist as you're doing it.

[twospots]

I have a couple of friends w forearm issues who use variations of these: https://www.climbing.com/gear/forearm-therapy/

I don't remember the one I saw looking exactly like any of those, but I imagine there are a lot of versions. I think one was even homemade? Like, someone had rubber-banded together two roller sticks.

I also know a lot of climbers who use tennis balls/lacrosse balls/foam balls/foam rollers, and bodyweight to do their own massaging. There's always someone at my gym doing some sort of weird contortion to press an odd part of their body into a ball.

[rydra_wong]

there isn't really any convenient way to foam roller them without having someone else doing it for me?

There is, though it's awkward and probably proportions-dependent how well it work. You lie face-down on the roller, with your arm flattened between your body and the roller (palm up or down as you wish).

Or you can roll your arm on the two-tennis-balls-in-a-sock equivalent (kneeling on the floor with the roller on a yoga block provides a height at which I can put my weight into it, YMMV).

Or: sit in a chair, put one forearm on your knee (doing this with one leg crossed over the other works well for me), then use the other forearm or elbow to massage it with.

Might also be worth checking out the terribly-named "voodoo floss" techniques (wrap the part you're trying to attack in a resistance band to "pin" skin and surface layers in place while you move the joint, basically).

Can also be useful to put your thumb and finger round the wrist of the other hand at its narrowest point as tightly as you can, then move that hand through as wide a range of motion as possible.