07/23/2026
Whether you’re recovering from a hand injury, surgery or dealing with stiffness, the right exercises can help restore movement and improve function. In this video, Dr. Todd Gaddie explains the basic anatomy of your finger joints and demonstrates several range of motion exercises that may be recommended as part of your recovery.
Video transcript
Dr. Todd Gaddie:
Dr. Todd Gaddie here to talk to you about finger range of motion and finger range of motion exercises.
Depending upon the injury or condition that you have, these may or may not be appropriate, so please check with your hand surgeon or with your occupational therapist to make sure that these are right for you.
Finger Joint Anatomy
When we talk about moving the hands and doing exercises of the fingers, we talk about the independent joints. The joint closest to your fingernail being the DIP, or distal interphalangeal joint, the middle joint being the PIP, or proximal interphalangeal joint, and the joint closest to your hand being your MCP, or metacarpophalangeal joint.
When we work on range of motion, we like to work on range of motion of each of these independent, as an independent tendon does function to help move these joints, and each of these joints can get stiff for a number of reasons.
DIP Blocking Exercise
Doing a DIP blocking exercise, where you’re going to hold the finger straight and only allow for motion of this DIP joint, can be helpful to help activate the tendons to both bend and straighten that finger.
PIP Blocking Exercise
We can move down to a PIP blocking [exercise] and do the similar motion where we’re bending and straightening only at the PIP joint.
Tabletop Test Exercise
The next joint down, the metacarpophalangeal joint, would be holding the PIP and DIP joints straight while flexing the MCP joint in what we would call a tabletop test.
If you do have some stiffness associated with one of your MCP joints and being unable to fully flex, you may notice that you have a finger that sticks up a little bit.
Gently applying pressure to the top of the finger to the point of having some discomfort but not overt pain and holding that to a count of 10 will be helpful to help increase your range of motion.
Hook Fist and Full Fist Exercises
To work on motion of the DIP and PIP joints, we really think about doing what’s called a hook fist where we’re trying to get our fingers to have the MCP joint straight while the PIP and DIP joints are flexed.
If you again have an injury that has a finger that sticks out a little bit, applying some gentle pressure to try to get that into that hook fist for a count of ten, again to the point of having some discomfort but not overt pain, can be very helpful.
Taking that hook fist and making it into a full composite fist is also helpful to work on flexing the MCP, PIP, and DIP joints all at the same time.
Abduction and Adduction Exercises
The final motion we talk about is abduction, or being able to spread the fingers apart, and adduction, being able to bring the fingers together.
Depending on the injury, you may have some difficulty with this.
If you have any questions, ask your therapist or your hand surgeon. We’d be happy to help.
