The biggest issue with RSI and other repetive-use injuries (which happens in many professions and even athletics, especially with bad form) is that it happens slowly, then suddenly. It's so slow that it's discomfort. And you ignore that discomfort, especially as your concentration is on a computer monitor with important stuff to worry about being displayed on it. Also, sometimes inflammation happens later (later that night, later that week, etc.).
Start now to reduce your RSI (and RSI isn't your only problem, more on that below):
Get an external keyboard either that has an ergonomic design is is comfortable for you, and a mouse too. A Mac keyboard will be nightmare, don't use it. A Mac 'Magic Mouse' or trackpad will cause damage. It's not made for serious long-term work (there might be a lawsuit one day).
Pro tip: this may sound crazy, but get two mice, one left, one right. Change often. Learn to use the lefty even if you're right-handed, or vice-versa. You'll be surprised at how quickly you get used to it (and you'll laugh when someone tries to show you something on your workstation).
Get a desk that moves up and down. Spend some time standing, some time sitting. Again, change often.
Next, other than RSI is your neck and back. As your rhomboids get stretched and weak from forward rotation of the shoulders, the rear neck muscles get stretched and weak, the serratus goes unused, the chest and front-neck muscles get short and tight... You arch your head forward which causes your head (which already weighs about 8 pounds) to exert a lot more than 8 pounds of force on those muscle groups. And you also look at your phone all day, which you hold down below you. Well you're in for a world of nightmares and headaches that'll make the RSI a distraction by comparison.
Start early to avoid these things, before it becomes too late.
Sincerely,
A guy with some greying and screwed up wrists/hands and neck.
Suddenly, pain everywhere. The tips of my fingers were burning after every keystroke, some of the muscles/tendons in my right wrist felt like they were about to snap after using the mouse for a few hours.
How are these products still on the market? Two weeks in I bought my own mouse and keyboard and haven't had a single bit of pain since.
I was in so much pain one day I couldn't use the mouse with my right hand, and began using it with my left hand. The pain gradually went away and I've never had problems since. I think I had a bad habit of some kind when mousing with my right hand I never developed when using my left. Now almost exclusively mouse left handed.
That said, physical exercise, especially hiking and yoga, have helped my neck, back, arm, leg stiffness & pain, etc. considerably. It's as necessary as brushing teeth for me to feel physically ok to be able to keep working in an office.
Stretching is only half the battle. One must stretch the correct muscles (the ones that are too tight, like the pecs and scalenes) and strengthen the ones that are loose and weak (like the rhomboids, serratus and others).
If pursuing weightlifting, which I highly highly recommend, I recommend a real trainer (not most half-baked ones you see in gyms), and spending a lot of time specifically nerding out on exercise physiology, even physical therapy. There are some very good YouTube channels - one of my favorite is Calisthenics Movement.
One simply cannot work in an office or at a computer workstation and expect not to have the body pains of a coal miner by the time you hit your 40's without balancing out muscular strength and joint mobility that you lose by doing this.
Much of strength training, a lot of people are surprised to know, involve neurological connections created simply using muscles in movement patterns that are new. It's very similar to the way you learn proprioception (standing on a skateboard, surfboard, or a subway car without holding onto anything). In the same way, muscles get stronger simply because more fibers are recruited, due to repetitive motions. In the early stages, this is much and perhaps most of the 'gains' in strength.
It's getting late and I've fallen into a rabbit hole. In short, do weight training or SOME sort of mobility work (yoga, pilates, whatever) if you work at a computer for a living. These random HN messages can save you thousands of dollars of future medical bills / PT bills and incalculable discomfort.
I've been meaning to get into calisthenics and have had to push it due to other responsibilities.
One of the problems is that we are all very good at finding excuses. Exercising, hover, even if it's a bit here and there during the day must not take a big chunk of your time. When I managed to stick to my schedule in the past I actually started to enjoy the "grind" the challenge of lasting longer, improving form and so on.
I'll go back at it, thanks!
I began to get problems in my right wrist from too much mousing (and probably using wrong mice for too long). I started switching between right and left mouse usage, and not only did it reduce the pain in the right side, but I found I adapted to left mousing fairly quickly and easily.
Currently, have switched out my mouse for a trackball in the right hand and a trackpad in the left (though occasionally). Next up is the keyboard and chair.
The body adapts to whatever you do. If you crawl around all day long on all fours scratching at rocks, your body will adapt to that, too. Adaptations have a price.
The height of your chair and the desk are critical here. [1] I have a desk that I can adjust between standing and normal, and I switch between the two when I can. That can be expensive, though.
I started to make a list of muscular issues (interior shoulder rotation, pelvic tilt) but I realized that first, I'm not qualified to provide the top problems that everyone faces, and second, I'm not really sure which resources to best learn from. Instead, I suggest people spend some time searching in YouTube (or the web) for 'computer posture problems' or 'shoulder pain computer' or 'neck pain text neck' and looking at the Physical Therapy links, sometimes which have a lot of information.
At a high level what works for ME is to 'switch it up.' Use left mouse and right mouse. Stand and sit. I never use a laptop, but at my age I've reached the point that my body punishes me viciously if I sit hunched over for even a couple of hours of time or angle my shoulder, neck or right forearm too long in one bad position.
Body awareness is important and it's hard to convey what that really means - I learned that from a PT and from weight training. It's not something you can read and gain.
But you can be aware of shitty posture when you're using your phone by looking down at it - a HUGE cause of neck pain. At first glance this site isn't bad for a starting point.[2].
1 - http://www.computer-posture.co.uk/shoulder-pain-computer/
2 - https://www.spine-health.com/blog/modern-spine-ailment-text-...
I was scouring the net and ran across a developer who swore that The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain by Sarno fixed his issues. I looked him up, proved to myself he was a dev and then basically said, fuck it, let's try it despite it seeming woo-woo to the extreme.
Little to no pain to this day. This was after MONTHS of PT and ergonomic changes that didn't solve the problem.
Anyway. Just my two cents.
*EDIT - one of these was the article (perhaps both), https://blog.evanweaver.com/2012/09/05/a-programmers-guide-t... and http://aaroniba.net/how-i-cured-my-rsi-pain
I also think that my issues were at least in part due to muscle tension which was coming not due to physical issues but due to emotional issues. Keep an open mind and read "The Great Pain Deception" and see if it applies to your life.
I really think that in addition to the physical benefits of rock climbing helping me, it was also the realization that if I could climb rocks then there wasn't anything really wrong with my hands, and that pain when using the computer was a conditioned response.
* Hand, forearm, shoulder and neck massage. Weekly if need be. Don't discount problems in your shoulders causing issues in your wrists.
* Stopped using a single hand mouse, learned keyboard shortcuts. My RSI was worse on my mouse hand. The constant moving right hand off keyboard at 12 o'clock to 1 o'clock to click with mouse was a killer. Keeping hands centered and relatively immobile over keyboard helped.
* Bought my own office chair that fit me. I am short through the torso and chairs could never lift me high enough for me to avoid lifting elbows.
* Bought an ergonomic keyboard and mouse.
* Bought an ergonomic keyboard augment (kind of a tray that the keyboard sat upon, that had padded extensions under either side of my wrists) that kept my wrists off the edge of desk, edge of laptop, etc.)
* Every job I got, I brought my own chair and equipment and tossed whatever my employer provided.
* I had an ergonomics consultant come in and check my posture, desk, and chair set up.
As a heavy traveler, I'd really try the massage because you can get a massage in lots of locations. My shoulders were a great part of the problem.
Good luck.
Edit: I think I should also explain some of the difficulties I had with employers. Occasionally I got crap because I created an extra chair by bringing my own. I explained that I spent more time in my office chair than I did in my own bed, and I didn't purchase my bed by finding the cheapest mattress. Since I was in my chair more than my bed, I had even higher expectation of fit and comfort. If they had a problem with my asset being on their premise, they were free to buy the chair from me at my cost. Please see copies of medical bills which I'd be happy to claim as an expense.
The other issue I had was with IT. They would see all the nonstandard equipment and then say "we can't support X because of specialized keyboard or mouse". My response would be "I completely understand the needs of IT for support-ability. Please see copies of my medical bills for RSI and massage treatment. Please have IT procurement buy replacement equipment under IT's procurement control to ensure support-ability."
Both of these strategies proved successful with employers and the IT staff.
Or we can develop or dictation programming skills like John Siracusa.
COLEMAK keyboard layout
Contour RollerMouse Pro3
Regular wrist stretching
Apple keyboard*
*instead of Mechnical keyboards that require more force and vertical movement to depress a key
Edit: formatting
Anyway, if it is tennis elbow, you can buy a strap that alleviates ALL of the pain. https://www.google.com.au/search?q=tennis+elbow+strap My mate couldn't life 1kg with a bicep curl, put the strap on and did 10KG. It is like a miracle!
Longer term, you need to loosen out your bicep and upper traps. But really, just try that strap and see!
* first, switching between using L and R hands for mouse
* eventually, purchased a new mouse: Evoluent VerticalMouse 4 Right - neutralizes your wrist on mouse hand
* software that forces you to take breaks instead of just sitting and typing for hours straight. Workrave is what I use (http://www.workrave.org/) - freeware and lightweight. I take 12 second micro-breaks every 4.5 minutes and a 4 minute break ever 25. Get up, stretch around, wiggle your arms. Staring at a far away corner of the room helps w/ eye strain too
* for plane rides - small, wireless trackball has worked wonders. I can't use a laptop touchpad worth a damn