Activities for Supination

Supination is the outward rolling or rotation of the foot, through the ankle joint. The opposite of supination is pronation. Healthy feet moves through a balanced and stable range of motion without either supination or pronation. Excess rolling inward or outward of the foot, during motion and impact, can lead to ankle sprains, Achilles tendinitis, knee and hip pain. Supination and pronation also occur in the forearm. For example, the action of flipping your palm up to catch a raindrop is supination, and flipping your palm down, to show the back of your hand, is pronation. Activities for supination help to build strength, balance and stability in the muscles and joints associated with that movement. If you tend to pronate, supination exercises may be part of a rehabilitation program to correct your body's movement and alignment.

Previous Injury

• Often a previous injury can cause excess supination due to damage to ligaments or tendons that limit supination. During running or walking, you are more at risk of rolling your ankle or straining the knee or hip, as other body parts become affected by the imbalance at the point of impact. Proper shoes and orthotics will help correct supination and pronation problems, but rehabilitation exercises may also be prescribed by a physiotherapist.

Arm Supination Activities

• During a workout, you can do cable supination exercises, which work the biceps brachii and brachioradialis, that assist the arm in supination. For example, tie a resistance cable to a fixed object at hip level. On the other end, tie a wand or handle. Grip this end with your right hand and position your left hip toward the fixed object securing the other end of the cable. Next, turn your body so that your left hip is closest to the stationary object that you first tied the cable to. Bend your elbow to 90 degrees at hip level, palm down. Rotate your hand, against the resistance of the cable, until your palm is facing up. Repeat 12 times. You can achieve the same results using dumbbells as well. Leave out the cable, but use the same body and arm positions, as detailed above. Start with a three- to five-lb. weight. Start with the palm down and rotate the dumbbell until the palm is facing up. Do not move your elbow. Repeat 12 times. Do the following exercise to improve your ankle mobility following an injury, or to prevent one: Stand with your feet pointing forward, hip-width apart. Roll onto the outsides of both feet slowly and carefully. Roll back. Repeat five to 10 times.

Children's Hemiplegia and Stroke

• One of the symptoms of hemiparesis in children is having excessive muscle tone in the hand, which can limit finger and forearm movement. This can weaken the muscles associated with supination and pronation, so part of physiotherapy may involve exercises and activities that turn the palm up (and down). Some examples of supination activities, which could by done by a child or an adult who has suffered a stroke and lost hand and arm movement, include: turning the pages of a book, ringing water out of a towel by twisting it, scooping and eating a snack such as pudding or a bowl of cereal, playing with a Slinky or playing "guess which hand" games, where the child hides something in one hand and flips the palms up to reveal which hand contains the object.