Weak hands
4 Reasons It’s Not “Weak Hands” — It’s One Joint, and It’s Hormonal
Read on to find out what’s actually going on — and why it was never a strength problem at all.
My physio put one of those little squeeze gauges in my hand, watched the number come up low, and said: “Yeah, your grip strength has dropped. Let’s get you doing some hand exercises.” I did the exercises. For three months. Squeezing a rubber ball every night like homework. My grip strength number went up. My thumb still hurt exactly the same.
That’s when I started to think the number was measuring the wrong thing entirely.
1. “Just Do Some Grip Exercises” Solves a Problem You Don’t Actually Have
Grip strength and joint stability are not the same thing, and almost nobody separates them for you. A weak muscle gets stronger with exercise. A joint that’s actually unstable doesn’t — no matter how many reps you do, because the muscle was never the problem.
2. The Real Problem Isn’t Strength — It’s One Joint Losing Its Footing
At the base of your thumb is a joint called the CMC — where your thumb meets your wrist. That joint is held in place by ligaments, and ligaments respond to oestrogen. As oestrogen drops through perimenopause, those ligaments lose collagen and get looser, and the joint that used to stay perfectly put starts to shift slightly under ordinary grip. One shift you’d never feel. But it happens constantly, all day, and a loose joint has nowhere to settle.
That’s not a strength problem. That’s a stability problem, in one specific joint, at one specific life stage. You could have full strength in every muscle in your hand and still feel exactly this.
3. Strength Training Can Actually Make It Worse, Not Better
Loading a joint that’s already unstable — gripping harder, squeezing a ball, doing resistance exercises — doesn’t stabilise it. It asks an already-shifting joint to absorb more force, more often. The joint swells to protect itself. That swelling stiffens things, so the next grip hurts more — and the cycle gets worse instead of better.
4. Every “Solution” You’ve Been Given Assumes You’re Weak — So None of Them Help
A hand therapist hands you a squeeze ball. A doctor says build up your strength. A rigid splint locks the joint in place by stopping your hand entirely. And underneath all of it is the quiet implication that you just need to try harder. None of that was ever going to work, because none of it was built around what’s actually happening.
So What Can You Actually Do About It?
- Support the one joint no squeeze ball or exercise ever reaches
- Do it without locking the thumb, so you can still get on with your day
- Be comfortable enough to wear for hours at a time
So a hand therapist who specialises in midlife joint changes set out to build one.
FlexHold: Support for the One Joint That Was Never a Strength Problem
- A contoured pad supports the CMC joint at the base of your thumb, the exact one other braces miss
- Your thumb and all four fingers stay completely free, so you keep full use of your hand
- Soft, lightweight and breathable — comfortable enough to wear for hours, not just twenty minutes at a stretch
I left the link above if you want to have a look.
Three months of squeeze balls taught me my grip was never the problem. This is what actually was.
— Diane