Hand and Dexterity Exercises

Fine motor skills are often affected in Parkinson’s disease. Impaired dexterity can make everyday tasks, such as buttoning your shirt, tying your shoes, or opening a jar, more difficult. Hand exercises can help you overcome these challenges. Complete the following exercises once daily to help enhance your fine motor skills.

To follow these exercises, you will need a small kitchen towel (or any similar cloth that you can scrunch, fold, throw, and twist) lined paper, and a pen.

TIP: Do the exercises below in front of a mirror so you can easily see the shape of your hands.

Full Hand Stretch

Open and close your hand 10 times. Make sure to spread the palm and fingers as wide as possible.

Finger-thumb Opposition

One by one, touch the tip of each finger to your thumb, starting with your index finger. While doing this exercise, try to keep the non-moving fingers as long as straight as possible.

Finger Abduction/Adduction

Hold your hands up with fingers held together and palms flat, as if pressing them against a wall or window – this is your starting position. Try to keep your palms as flat as possible throughout this exercise.

Open the web space between your thumb and hand without your other fingers bending or moving, then return to start position. Continue by opening and closing the spaces between your index and middle fingers, middle and ring fingers, and ring and little fingers. Return to the start position each time the fingers close together.

Towel Scrunch

Hold the corner of a small kitchen towel with your palm facing down. Scrunch up the towel into your palm without changing the orientation of your hand.

Throw and Catch

Scrunch your kitchen towel up into a ball, holding it in one hand with your palm facing down. Throw the towel ball up into the air and catch it with the same hand. Aim to catch the towel with your palm facing down again. Try combining this exercise with the towel scrunch, if you can.

Towel Wringing

Roll or fold your towel into a long shape, and practice wringing the length of the towel from end to end. Try to make sure both hands are wringing equally. Once you reach the end of the towel, switch directions.

Handwriting Practice

Small and cramped writing, known as micrographia, is a common symptom of Parkinson’s disease, and is related to bradykinesia (slowness of movement), rigidity, and tremor in the hand. The best way to manage micrographia is to optimize your medications, and practice your handwriting using visual targets, such as the margins on a sheet of paper.

Take a piece of lined paper and mark our your writing margins. Make the lines bigger by grouping multiple lines together, as shown below. Practice writing letters of the alphabet both upper- and lowercase, trying to touch the top and bottom of your margins each time. Go slow to prevent your writing from getting smaller. As you improve over time, you can practice with smaller margins, or remove them altogether. When you feel ready, you can also practice writing slightly faster.

Last updated: April 13, 2021 by neuro physiotherapist, Shelly Yu