Ask HN: How to avoid sore wrists | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to avoid sore wrists

7 pointsdaleharvey18 comments

A while ago I switched to coding entirely on a laptop, along with that I started learning emacs + keyboard shortcuts and got rid of my mouse.

This was all good, I work a lot faster now and think about using the desktop ui a lot less. However I have noticed its beginning to affect my wrists, I dont have much pain yet but I can feel it coming.

The main culrit is my right wrist, while my left one sits in the same place over its keys all the time my right wrist needs to arch back to press the arrow keys / pgup / pgdn constantly.

Anyone else hit the same problem, have a good solution?

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Two things seemed to help me: 1. Wearing a wrist brace (a cheap one from the local supermarket) made me notice when I was bending my wrist too much, and allowed me to train myself to not do that (i.e., to move my entire arm when I needed to reach other keys); 2. using an external USB keyboard allowed me to keep my wrists straighter while typing.

I haven't used the USB keyboard for many months, but I still bring out the wrist brace whenever my wrists start to twinge, and they rarely get beyond that point.

Are you using your laptop in your lap or on a desk?

I've found for myself that it's essential not to have the keyboard too high... my elbows should be comfortably at 90 degrees and my wrists comfortably straight. This means for me with a keyboard using a keyboard tray to bring the keyboard below desk height, and when using a laptop having it in my lap.

Yeh I think this is one of the problems, most of the other comments mentioned it as well, I do sit down quite low which means I probably dont move my arms enough.

Cheers everyone for the suggestions.

Fifteen years ago I had numbness in my fingers from lots of hacking. I ended up talking to the dr who invented the "pilosplint": http://www.painreliever.com/IMAK_IMAKPilo.html who suggested the problem may be in how my wrists are positioned when I sleep. You need 6 hours a day in a neutral "at rest" position for swelling to subside. I was often sleeping with my hands curled up. Eventually, I retrained myself to sleep with my hands in a more relaxed position and all symptoms have gone away.

I'm working through some wrist/hand issues now, and I've found that the biggest key in prevention/healing is taking breaks.

Find some free software that will time your computer usage (I use Time Out for Mac) and force you take 10-minute breaks every 30-45 minutes or so. I also take 15-second breaks every 10 minutes, which may sound pointless, but more than anything it's just a safety net to keep me from tensing up for too long a period of time.

As for external keyboards, if you can afford it, I suggest investing in a Kinesis Advantage (~$300).

Don't screw around. Carpal tunnel surgery seriously sucks. I got both of my wrists fixed a couple of days before my 21st birthday.

Things that have helped me... Make yourself aware of your posture and wrist location. Don't type with your wrist bent at funny angles. Run something like workrave or xwrits and force yourself to take breaks. Exercise. I switched from emacs to vim because I couldn't train myself to use opposite hands for the ctrl key and the letter key. Stretch. Try out different keyboards. Try out different keyboard heights.

The solution is to get a decent external keyboard. A laptop keyboard is never going to be good. Stop dancing around the issue - get a decent keyboard.

I started to get wrist pain about 10 years ago, which worried me. This was right around the time MS first released their ergonomic keyboard. It was 100ukp, but I figured that was a small price to pay if it fixed my problem. It did - the pains went away in about 2 weeks. They've never come back (I've used various models of the MS ergo keyboard since then).

Get a decent keyboard.

The way I solve this on my Eee is to actually move the hand when going for the arrow keys instead of twisting it. Bending the fingers is also much less evil than twisting them. Beyond that, regular joint massage helps, try and find someone around you who knows how to do it, and get them to teach you. The biggest amount of stress on my wrist comes from sports/martial arts rather than computer use, so I need to massage my wrists regularly anyway, but it definitely does help with the issues caused by computer use as well.

In my own experience, wrist pains didn't actually come from wrist action, but from wrist action with my arm in an unnaturally high position: on a high desk, with your shoulder kind of "locked", you bend your wrist to reach for the arrows. At the right height, you'd instead move your elbow backwards and not bend your wrist.

Also, people often point out that vim-controls are wrist-friendlier than emacs-controls. I use vim more often than emacs, but when in emacs, I user viper-mode to have vim key-bindings.

I had a friend who was an actor and playwright. He used a laptop sitting in his lap to churn out lots of plays, but he ended up with carpal tunnel and wrist braces. Be sure that the laptop is at the correct height. This is when the tops of your hands are level with the tops of your arms. And there are many other good suggestions in the threads here.

I also would get an external keyboard, as very few laptops have good enough keyboards for high-throughput, long hours work.

I owe my lack of wrist problems to playing piano. I learned to keep my wrists straight and NOT rest on the desk or the keyboard. And I second the comments about getting an external keyboard for that reason - laptop keyboards pretty much force you to bend your wrist downward to rest on the laptop. I also have my chair set to a height where I can rest my forearms on the desk but keep my wrists floating. I've never had a problem with pain.

Our office has a foosball table. Playing a game of foos every couple of hours is a great way to avoid wrist pain. Of course you end up with calloused hands instead.

Other remedies: learn to juggle and take juggle breaks every so often. Get some silly putty and play knead it while you're thinking.

The basic thing to do is get your hands away from the keyboard and use them in a graspy way.

I had the same problem. I bought a wrist brace ($17 @ target), and I have a larger desk that my arms can rest on. Once I fixed my wrist issues with the wrist brace, my shoulder started hurting from keeping my arm/wrist in the same spot hovered over my keyboard all the time. The two together have largely gotten rid of any pain.

Don't use arrow keys or pgup/pgdown. They're totally unthematic with the emacs way. Anything that requires you to stretch your hands from the standard rest position is bad.

Unfortunately some emacs modes, most notably orgmode, use keychords such as shifted or ctrled arrows. This is very unemacs and needs to be corrected.

Wear wrist splints for awhile, learn to move your arm instead of bending your wrist. I got used to it by doing an ergo keyboard.

Additionally, be careful how you support your weight during sex and pushups, it also is a potentially damaging instance.

Guys... www.softflex.com is a life saver. No fancy keyboards just pads that you wear like gloves to cushion your wrist.

Does the write glove thing work better than one of those gel wrist pads that sits on the desk in front of the keyboard/mouse?

a typematrix keyboard and dvorak helped me.

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