Today’s Scribble Kibble episode is all about how to stretch to avoid long term and short
term art injuries.
If you’re an artist or animator, you spend hours every day doing small, repetitive motions
with your hands.
Over time, that constant repetition can damage the nerves and tendons in your hands and arms,
leading to problems like Tendonitis, Carpal Tunnel, and Arthritis.
If you already have one of these art injuries, one or more of these stretches will be painful.
That’s okay.
Be slow and gentle but try to stretch enough that you feel the stretch.
The idea is to stretch the injured area so it can relax.
In general though, you shouldn’t feel pain while you’re stretching.
If you feel pain, you’re pushing too far on that stretch and you should loosen up a
little bit.
For extreme pain, or pain that gets worse over time once you start a daily stretch routine,
stop stretching and see a doctor.
In this video I’m not going to hold all the stretches for as long as you should.
You should hold them for maybe about 10 seconds.
I have a separate video with just a stretch routine you can use to follow along if you
want to do it in real time.
Get in the habit of doing this at least once a day before you start working.
Hold arms out.
Face palms upwards.
Try to pull your palms back as far as you can.
Keep arms out.
Make regular fists.
Thumbs over your fingers.
Keep arms out.
Point fists down so you feel a stretch.
Hold out arms straight.
Keep your shoulders relaxed.
Tuck your thumbs in and grasp them with your fingers.
Now turn your fists down until you feel the stretch along here.
Hold.
Hold out arm, bend in hand, bend in fingers, push curved hand in toward arm.
You’ll feel the stretch here.
Press hand upside down on wall, keeping your arm straight.
If you like, you can reach around with the other hand and pull the thumb up.
Finish up with finger stretches.
Stretch out your arm all the way, angled a bit toward the floor.
Slowly pull your index finger up as far as it can go without causing pain.
Hold for a few seconds.
Now try to wiggle the free fingers.
Be slow because if your joints aren’t very loose the wiggling could hurt.
Relax.
Shake it out.
Repeat with
the rest of the fingers.
Pull fingers down one at a time.
If you’re like me you may not feel this one as much.
Hold.
Wiggle free fingers.
Relax.
Shake it out.
Repeat with the rest of the fingers.
Pull thumb back.
Wiggle fingers.
Pull thumb in.
Wiggle fingers.
Spread the spaces between fingers with your other hand.
You don’t need to hold these ones very long, just a second or two.
To finish, spread your fingers as far as you can.
Hold it.
Relax.
One more time.
These stretches, especially for your wrists and fingers, are very important for having
pain-free hands throughout your art career.
The stretches also work for musicians and gamers and pretty much anybody who works with
their hands a lot.
All of this is a bit much to memorize the first time around, so I have a separate video
with just the stretch routine if you’d like to follow along with that.