If you already have a good workout routine that you enjoy, I recommend some of these targeted exercises to help balance into your practice regimens. This is going to help with strengthening, conditioning and balancing some of those frequently used muscles. This is really great to do on your off days or as a warmup before you begin your practice arrange sessions. If you just want something simple to do to incorporate at home, I recommend just these simple bands that you can pick up at any of your fitness or sporting good stores. If you have something like a poll at your house or even a door hinge, you can simply loop this around and use this to do similar motions of rows. The other thing that you can do is essentially just choose your resistance by holding closer or further away on the bands and simply pulling straight back.
I would recommend about three to five sets of 10 of these. Again, this is something that you can do on your off day, or you can incorporate this as a warmup before your practice session. Another targeted exercise to incorporate is this wrist and forearm strength roller. I really like these because you can customize exactly how much weight that you want to use. You're simply just going to hold it all the way out in front of you, and you're going to use both your flexor and extensor muscles to roll the weight down all the way to the ground and then back up again. I recommend about three to five sets of 10 of these. You're definitely going to feel that burn in the forearms and the wrists, but this is really going to help you with that grip strength and that control while handling and shooting your firearm.
These two targeted exercises are really going to focus a little bit more on that PT portion of your shooting. There's a lot of shooters who, with consistent practice and things like dry fire, start to develop muscle and tendon issues in both their hands, their wrists, even their elbows. So one thing that you can do to combat that, again, is to employ the use of those extensor muscles. When you're constantly flexing and contracting those grip muscles and those flexors, that's when you're bound to develop some issues through there. So one thing that I like to do is just take a simple bucket like this and fill it with about five to 10 pounds of rice. Really simple exercise. You just put your hand all the way down into the bottom of the bucket, spread those fingers out and bring them up. That's going to create just enough resistance on your hand to employ those extensor muscles and help to balance out those tendons and muscles through your hand when you're constantly shooting and gripping your gun, thinking about your flexor and extensor muscles. When you're constantly using those to grip your gun and shoot your firearm, you really want to focus on some more PT type of exercises to incorporate into your practice routine. So I really like reversed wrist curls. This is something that you can do using 5, 8, 10 pounds or whatever weight you're comfortable with, but you want to have some sort of bench or flat surface in front of you that you can kneel behind or sit behind.
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You're then going to place your forearm completely flat over the bench, and you're simply going to contract that weight up and back towards your face. You want to do about three to five sets of 10. This is a great exercise to do before or after a practice session as that's really going to help to balance out those grip muscles that you were just using. A balanced health and fitness routine is important to any athlete, including any shooter. However, incorporating some targeted exercises to help focus on those flexor and extensor muscles will help to make sure that you avoid injury and get the most out of your practices.
YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZRl2W_LMv0
Credit: Krystal Dunn, Federal Ammunition