stretching exercises

[aki]

which exercises focus on stretching the hands and making them bigger?

[xvimbi]

which exercises focus on stretching the hands and making them bigger?

Slowly opening and closing the hand at the wrist. That is where you will achieve the biggest results. Of course, along with that, you will have to destroy the cartiledge between the fingers.

[cziffra777]

Your stretch should naturally get better as you advance. I suggest not trying too hard to improve your stretch through exercises. It's a good way to injure yourself. I've found that working on arpeggios, either in pieces or alone, helps with stretching. Chordal passages are also good for this.

[donjuan]

Aki, you will probably not find any stretching exercises that 'make your hands bigger'.  you might be able to increase your reach through flexibility exercises -->rock climbing is great --> but, you wont be able to physically get bigger hands if your growth plates have fused...maybe if you took some somatotropin..but then you risk acromegaly. augh....

Be happy with what you have!  
donjuan

[Antnee]

Didn't Chopin sleep with wedges in between his fingers? ? ? Of course, I don't know how well this works. Anyway, stretching shouldn't be necessary. What I mean is, if something is a stretch for you, odds are you'll need to find a way to play what you need to play differently instead of trying to break your hand by doing large splits. Roll the chord and what not. What do you need the stretching for?

[CC]

There are two sets of muscles that stretch your fingers to reach wide chords. One set flares the fingers out so that your pinky and thumb will try to form a straight line. The other set widens the palm without bending the fingers.  Therefore, when you are developing stretching muscles, you should work on these two separately -- it is more important to stretch the palm because bending the fingers outward causes stress.

To stretch the muscles for bending the fingers outward, place finger 234 on a table with thumb and pinky against the straight edge of a table, and push hand towards table so as to stretch the tendons between pinky and thumb.

To stretch the palm tendons, put your hands together, palm-to-palm, with the pinky of each hand interlocked with the thumb. Then push the hands towards each other so as to stretch the palm wider.

To exercise the stretching muscles, practice stretching wide and then relaxing instantaneously, very quickly, and try to do the same thing while playing. In this way, you can continually play wide chords without fatigue because you are resting between chords.  When you get good at this, you can play many chords very rapidly and still relax between chords. Try to work mostly on the muscles that widen only the palms (and not the fingers), so that the fingers are free to play the keys without stress.