Lecture Part 2: The pinky edge of support in our Hands
Movements/Postures from Class:
Rough Transcript of Class (Expect Typos)
Introducing the pinky edge of the hand: When we begin to hold space in our hands, we naturally find ourselves working more through the pinky edge, rather than pressing through the index finger, and when we look at the physiology of the hand, forearm and shoulder, we see that this is also a much more functional path of support. If this is a new concept to you, you’ll see the anatomy that proves its validity, but you’ll also need to really allow yourself to experiment in order to find this possibility as we have found in previous trainings that this is a hard habit to loosen up on. So let’s take a look at this concept anatomically in order to see it through a functional lens.
Ulna: When looking at the bones of the forearm, we have the Ulna and Radius. Bring your hand to your opposite wrist and find the medial and lateral boney landmarks. On the pinky finger side of the wrist we have the Head of the Ulna. From anatomical position this would be considered the medial edge of your arm, although in daily life this is more commonly felt as the lateral edge. For that reason, I will commonly refer to this side of the hand/wrist/arm as the pinky side. You can trace the edge of this bone up along the outside of the forearm to your elbow, where the other end of the Ulna is labeled the Olecranon process (pronounced like ‘Ol’ Cran-un’). If you hold your arm on your elbow while you bend and extend it you’ll see that that boney protrusion that you call your elbow is the head of this forearm bone.
Olecranon: Bring your fingertips to the boney landmarks surrounding the Olecranon process— these are the medial and lateral epicondyles of your Humerus. Between these two points is the Trochlea of the Humerus, around which the Olecranon process hinges, as it fits into the olecranon fossa, where this boney head can interact and join with the humerus for a strong boney connection of support. This is the humeroulnar joint. Compare this connection to the Radius and you’ll see that the ulna is much more suited to be the fulcrum of support when transferring force through the arm.
Wrist Joint: Bringing our attention back to the wrist, feel the boney protrusion on the inside of the wrist under the thumb joint, that’s one end of your Radius. The head of the Radius is up in the elbow joint, although you can’t feel it like the Ulna because its covered by the muscles of the forearm.
Radius: The Radius is an incredible bone that allows us to supinate and pronate our lower arm. It corresponds directly with the thumb side of the hand, which make sense when grasping an object and supinating and pronating, like turning a door knob, or picking fruit off a tree. The larger end of the radius is at the wrist, giving our entire hand an boney anchor to the arm itself. The smaller end is at the elbow, which makes it a tough sell for stability purposes.
Yin Yang: The Ulna and Radius are like yin and yang to each other when you look at their shape and function. The Radius is meant to revolve, and allow you to supinate and pronate your hand whereas the Ulna stays straight as a fulcrum of support for the humerus and shoulder joint above.
Experiment: Place your forearm on a table like a frozen karate chop. Now pronate the forearm by turning the palm face down, and then supinate the forearm by turning it face up again. Say it out loud to yourself for the sake of memorizing, as you pronate your forearm by turning it face down, imagine you are pressing a button and say to yourself ‘I am pro this’. And as you open supinate the arm allowing your palm to face up you can say, “That’s super, please give me some more!” You gotta try when it comes to anatomy stuff— it all pays off in the end.
But More importantly, I hope you notice that the pinky edge of your arm and hand can stay on the table while the thumb side of your arm and hand rotate. Lift your arm off the table and watch the same thing occur. This is the work of your Radius, the rotating forearm bone. The Ulna is fixed, and is a stable fulcrum around which to rotate.
So when we place our weight in the pinky edge of the hand, we are utilizing the stability of the Ulna. But when we place our weight in the index finger and thumb, we are asking a mobile joint to become the stabilizer, which is why it takes so many extra cues up the arm to pull it off. Why not just put your weight into the side of your hand and arm that are meant to be stabilizing? There’s a reason karate chops are done with this side of the arm, it’s built for it.
Back Arm Line: And the muscles tell the same story. The Deep Back Arm Line begins in the pinky side of the arm, runs along the Ulna, then teams up with Tricep followed by the rotator cuff muscles, rhomboids and levator scapula. This means that when you bring your weight into the pinky side of the hand, you not only are able to utilize the boney support of the Humeroulnar joint for support, but you are also activating the deep back arm line which ties directly into the shoulder joint itself via the rotator cuff and rhomboids. In fact, many serratus anterior exercises, such as the “inferior Glide” which looks like a frozen karate chop, not only activate the serratus but also the deep back arm line.
Front Arm Line: As opposed to the deep front arm line, which correlates with the thumb, your biceps and pec minor, which aren’t shoulder stabilizes per se. They would come online for a bear hug for example, or when lifting— we’ll talk more about this later. But the main idea is to notice that they aren’t shoulder stabilizer socket stabilizers like the back arm line. The pinky edge of the hand ties directly into your rotator cuff and works synergistically with scapular stabilizing muscles like the serratus anterior, where as the thumb side of the hand corresponds more to the front of the chest.