I'll be honest with you: hands and wrists are not the sexiest part of the body to train.
Nobody walks into a gym and says, "Today's the day I fix my grip." Nobody opens a training app and searches for wrist flexion progressions. And yet, in the years I've spent working with athletes, desk workers, new parents, and aging adults at Vital Performance Care — hands and wrists come up constantly. As a limitation. As a source of pain that won't fully go away. As the weak link that quietly holds people back from doing everything else they want to do.
That's why we built Hand & Wrist Foundations. And the fact that it took us this long to do it says something — not about us, but about how underserved this part of the body has been in the training world.
The Gap We Kept Seeing
When someone comes in with a shoulder problem, there's a well-developed playbook. Same for the hip, the knee, the lower back. There are established assessment frameworks, clear progressions, and plenty of programs — both in-clinic and online — designed to help people build back strength and function systematically.
Now try to find the same thing for the hand and wrist.
You'll find physio handouts. YouTube videos of generic wrist circles. Braces marketed to desk workers. The occasional grip gripper sold on Amazon. What you won't find is a structured, evidence-informed, progressive training program designed to actually build grip strength, wrist mobility, and hand resilience from the ground up.
We couldn't find it either. So we built it ourselves.
Where This Really Started
The idea for Hand & Wrist Foundations didn't come from a boardroom. It came from patterns I kept seeing on the floor.
The climber whose forearm pump was limiting their performance on specific hold types — not because they lacked overall strength, but because their training had never addressed pinch grip specifically.
The hockey player whose wrist was "fine" by imaging standards, but whose stick handling had quietly degraded over a season because nobody had ever progressively loaded his wrist flexors and extensors.
The desk worker who had tried a brace, tried ergonomic setups, tried stretching — and still had numbness that woke them up at night.
The new parent who was told "De Quervain's will go away on its own" and then spent eight months waiting for it to happen.
The 55-year-old who couldn't open a jar anymore and wanted to do something about it — but couldn't find a program that wasn't either a physiotherapy protocol or a grip competition training plan.
Each of these people needed the same thing: a real training program. Progressive, specific, testable. Not passive care. Not a handout. Not a random YouTube routine. A program.
Our Philosophy: Test, Train, Test Again
At Vital, we don't guess. That applies here the same way it does everywhere else.
Hand & Wrist Foundations is built around the same framework that underpins our other programs: test first, train specifically, test again. Before you start the program, you'll know your grip strength, your pinch strength, your wrist mobility in every direction, and your baseline endurance capacity. After the program, you'll have those numbers again — so you can see exactly what changed.
That matters for two reasons. First, objective data keeps you honest. Feelings lie; numbers don't. Second, the program is designed to be specific to what those numbers reveal. The Foundation phase isn't a warmup — it's where you establish real capacity before progressively building on it. You don't advance until you're ready.
The three phases — Foundation, Build, Perform — follow a deliberate arc. Phase 1 is about restoring mobility, conditioning tendons, and building pain-free grip capacity through isometric holds. Phase 2 introduces progressive dynamic loading: wrist curls, pinch work, pronation and supination under load. Phase 3 moves into the dynamic and sport-specific: drop catches, power development, carry variations, sport-specific drills. It's not complicated. But it is sequential, and sequence matters.
Who This Is For
We designed this program for three broad groups, and if you recognize yourself in any of them, it's probably for you.
The athlete whose grip is the weak link. If your deadlift ends because your hands give out before your back, if your stick handling is getting imprecise under fatigue, if your climbing performance drops on pinch holds specifically — your training has a gap. Hand & Wrist Foundations fills it.
The person managing a hand or wrist condition. Carpal tunnel. De Quervain's. Wrist tendonitis. Tennis elbow. Repetitive strain. If you've been managing one of these passively — resting, bracing, icing — without ever addressing the underlying capacity deficit, you haven't actually solved the problem. This program is designed to progressively load the tissues that need to be strong in order to stay healthy.
The person training for the long game. Grip strength is one of the strongest predictors of longevity we have. A 5 kg decrease in handgrip strength is associated with a 16–17% increased risk of all-cause mortality. It predicts cardiovascular events, cognitive decline, and functional independence in older adults. If you're thinking about what your hands will be capable of at 70, and you're not already training them, now is the time.
What Makes This Different
I want to be direct about what this program is not.
It's not a physiotherapy protocol. It's not designed to diagnose you or replace clinical care for acute or complex presentations. If you have a fresh fracture, a nerve compression requiring surgery, or a condition that needs direct clinical oversight — that's where you should be.
But most people with hand and wrist problems don't fit that picture. They've already been cleared. Or they're not injured, they're just undertrained. Or they know something is off and they want to be proactive before it becomes a real problem.
For all of those people, what they need is a training program — not more passive care, not more waiting, not more generic advice to stretch and rest.
That's exactly what we've built.
Grant, Nick, and I have spent months developing this: the exercise library, the progressions, the testing protocols, the equipment options (because we know not everyone has a full gym), and the sport-specific applications. We've road-tested the sequences. We've stress-tested the progressions. We've thought hard about who this is for and, just as importantly, who it isn't for.
We're proud of it. And we think it fills a gap that genuinely needed filling.
Ready to Get Started?
Hand & Wrist Foundations is now available. Whether you're dealing with something that hasn't fully resolved, training for a sport that demands more from your hands than your current program gives, or simply taking grip health seriously before you need to — this is your starting point.
Learn more about Hand & Wrist Foundations →
Book a complimentary 15-min consult →
More About The Author
Carla Robbins, MSc Exercise Physiology — Co-Founder, Vital Performance Care
Carla holds an Undergraduate Degree in Exercise Physiology from the University of Calgary and a Master’s in Exercise Physiology (2016). She has worked with the Canadian Sport Institute and co-founded Vital Performance Care with Dr. Amy MacKinnon inside Eau Claire Athletic Club in Calgary. Carla specializes in fitness testing, endurance training, and strength and conditioning for everyday and high-performance athletes.
