How should I exercise if I have upper limb muscle atrophy?

Common causes of muscle atrophy include arthritis. Upper limb muscle atrophy is very common. When muscle atrophy occurs, you should pay attention to exercise. Only reasonable exercise methods can help you recover as soon as possible. Your usual exercise should be targeted and you should grasp the rhythm. You should also pay attention to rest while exercising.

1. Choose exercise methods in a targeted manner. There are many ways to exercise, but in order to achieve the goal of increasing muscle as quickly as possible, you must follow a common principle: when exercising, gradually increase the amount of exercise without increasing the number of exercises and exercise time, so that the muscles feel tired quickly and achieve the purpose of muscle exercise. Each exercise should be done 10 times continuously. If it exceeds 10 times, you need to increase the weight of the equipment. Or you can do two or three times continuously each time, and hold each time for 6 to 10 seconds. If it exceeds that, you need to increase the weight of the equipment. If you simply increase the exercise time, you can only increase the density of capillaries in the muscles, improve blood circulation in the muscles, increase the supply of oxygen and nutrients during muscle exercise, and make the muscles less prone to fatigue, but you cannot effectively strengthen the muscles. It should be pointed out that the exercise methods used by many patients in daily life are inappropriate. If the lower limb muscles are atrophied, some people simply use walking as a method of exercise, thinking that the more they walk, the better. In fact, doing so will not only fail to effectively increase muscle strength, but will also cause joint damage due to muscle relaxation and joint instability. For example, some patients use the method of rolling walnuts and fitness balls with their fingers to exercise their atrophied upper limbs, but they don't know that doing so can only enhance the coordination of finger movements and the endurance of hand muscles, but cannot increase arm muscle strength or thicken muscles. Exercises for muscle atrophy should be targeted. You should exercise the muscles that have atrophied. Do not replace exercises for atrophied muscles with exercises for healthy muscles, for example, do not replace forearm rotation with shrugs and abductions.

2. Master the rhythm of exercise. There are certain requirements on the time intervals for exercise for patients with muscular atrophy. Only when the muscles have enough rest time can fatigue be fully eliminated, consumed nutrients can be fully compensated, and through overcompensation, the muscles can gradually hypertrophy. On the contrary, if you exercise too frequently, your muscles will not get enough rest and your muscle strength will not increase. Therefore, exercise requires rhythm, and the more is not necessarily better.

3. Control the amount of exercise. When exercising, people often use dumbbells, sandbags, tension springs, and rubber strips. So, what weight of dumbbells and sandbags should you choose and what kind of tension springs and rubber strips should you choose? This should be determined based on each person's muscle strength, and generally should exceed 2/3 of their maximum muscle strength. For example, use your greatest force to lift a 6 kg sandbag, and gradually increase the weight of the sandbag. If the original muscle strength is too weak to lift the affected limb itself, then during exercise, in addition to the strength of the affected limb itself, external force is also needed to help. If one of the upper limbs is diseased, you can use the method of clasping both hands together and raising them up, using the healthy limb to drive the affected limb to move. When exercising an injured limb, pain may occur, and the pain will reflexively cause the muscles to relax, making the exercise ineffective. At the same time, pain may also be a signal of muscle damage, so when exercising, you should pay attention to choosing pain-free movements and actively treat the pain.