Sometimes it is hard to make our arms move quickly and easily. We need to warm up our muscles and loosen our joints to make our arms work better.
If you see no improvement with skills development after 4 months of using this advice sheet, please contact the Children and Young People’s Therapy Service for further advice.
What you may see
The child or young person may have difficulties with:
- stiff, uncoordinated upper limb movements
- handwriting and scissor skills
- ball games
- self care tasks such as dressing, using knife and fork and brushing teeth
- fine motor activities.
Strategies and advice
Here are some activities to help you warm up your shoulders and forearms before doing things that need you to use your arms. You can pick one or two from each section and change them so you don’t get bored.
Remember if you feel pain or get tired, try these strategies;
- plan the day so that harder activities are spaced out
- encourage good posture – sit straight with feet on the floor
- use warm ups before lots of writing
- use wind down tasks before pain starts
Warm up for shoulder and forearms
Chair push-ups
Sit on a chair and hold on to the edge of it and push your body up from the seat whilst pushing down through your arms. Aim to complete 5 in a row.
Arm spirals
Hold both arms out to the side at shoulder height and begin to circle them, starting with small circles and progressing to larger circles. When the circles have gradually reached full size, reduce the circles to get back to the smallest size (approximately 10 circles in total). Start with a few repetitions aiming to get up to 10 with practise.
Wall press ups
Facing the wall stand approximately 1½ arm lengths away. Then stretch out your arms at shoulder level placing your hands flat on the wall. You should then bring your face to the wall without moving your feet keeping your body straight, then straightening your arms push yourself away from the wall. Repeat 10 times.
Warm up for wrist and hands
The following activities aim to warm up your child’s arms and hands before tasks requiring controlled use of their hands and arms. Following this type of activity relaxation activities can be used, particularly if the child experiences pain or fatigue. Relaxation activities can also be used during the task if the child is too tense.
- Finger walking – walk middle and index finger along the table.
- Drumming – rest arm and wrist flat on table; tap each finger in turn, starting with thumb.
- Make a tent – rest forearm and wrist flat on table; make a tent shape with one hand; open the door – thumb; open the windows – little then middle finger.
- Making circles – touch each finger in turn to thumb tip, form a circle; do this with each hand in turn then both together.
- Drawing circles – with forearm flat on table, make a dot on the paper with a pencil and then, keeping forearm flat and still, draw an enlarging spiral outward form the dot.
- Inch worm – hold hand flat on the table, palm down. Bunch hand up and slide wrist up to meet fingers (whilst keeping fingertips on the table) then flatten hand again – travel the width of the table using this method.
- Pencil Olympics – twirl pencil in between fingers and walk fingers up and down the length of the pencil.
Wind down
- Tense each part of the upper limb in turn and then release (fingers, lower arm, upper arm, shoulders).
- Raise lower arm and then let it drop onto your lap. Repeat a few times and also with the upper arm.
- Swing arms back and forth.
- Shake arms like a floppy rag doll.
Last reviewed September 2025