Hand and Wrist Exercises for Computer Users
ergonomictrends.com
ergonomictrends.com
During my senior year of college, I had a lot hand pain and I also didn't go to the gym that year. Now, I type more than I ever have, but I'm also deadlifting over 500 lbs x 5 and I don't get any pain at all.
(Dead)lifting is a remarkably good panacea. Back pain, mental blocks, anxiety. Fixes a lot of shit. If you're not lifting heavy, you should be. [0] is a good place to get started.
The article mentions those grip strengtheners in (general) support of this--but the deadlift already does this (i.e., train grip) and a lot more.
[0] https://aasgaardco.com/store/books-posters-dvd/books/startin...
You need the upper body strength to avoid supporting yourself on your wrists. They should just "float". Having good forearm support helps, but it's not enough if you're weak.
And core strength helps prevent back pain. Along with a chair that helps you sit up straight, and provides lumbar support.
Wrist curls and reverse wrist curls have also helped me a lot, for both wrists and elbows. I also use self-practice wrist locks for strengthening and stretching. Or with a rubber torsion rod.
I think the key to getting strong is barbell exercises, because they can be precisely and incrementally loaded. (So you linearly progress.)
> And core strength helps prevent back pain.
Deadlifts, squats, and presses are all extremely good at developing "core" strength. Ab-specific exercises are not (they cannot be effectively loaded, and the loads are much smaller, and the spinal flexion/extension involved often aggravate existing back injury).
> chair that helps you sit up straight, and provides lumbar support.
If the chair is helping you, then you are not using your muscles and will continue to atrophy away. Lumbar support in general is not a good thing.
But I've always preferred using lighter weights with lots of reps.
> And core strength helps prevent back pain
Sounds like a sales pitch for deadlifts.
Deadlifts are probably the most trainable movement for building strength in the most muscles, and muscles (upper back) that are weak if you sit at a desk.
I feel like regular resistance training has helped me avoid some RSI - probably - but after 40 the injuries just come quicker and the recovery time keeps increasing no matter who you are or what your routine is.
As you get older, you learn the value of these little PT exercises as mentioned in the article. I can't vouch for them all but I do several, as suggested by my physical therapist. And this isn't just for computer use; the "be strong" advocates, as they age, will likely find they need to embrace physical therapy and targeted work on muscles throughout their body if they want to keep up their regular routine, too.
1. The weight and progression advocated by the book is dangerous. I personally had a meniscus tear while squatting 275lb. You might say I didn’t have proper form, but it just takes one moment’s lapse to permanently injure you.
2. I don’t think you need to lift extremely heavy weights to benefit. Largely I think the linear progression extolled by Starting Strength and its supporters are a way to gamify and motivate. But lifting heavier as the only goal may lead to injuries. Motivation can also be found in performing better at some sport.
3. Aesthetically speaking, SS is focused on the legs, glutes, and kinetic chain. Not enough attention is given to upper body. This can lead to strange body proportions. I believe much more focus should be given to the upper body.
2. You need to lift heavy to get strong. This is the only way to induce stress that causes the right adaptations for getting stronger.
3. The novice phase later introduces chin-ups and also of course has pressing and benching. The novice phase lasts--at maximum--about 8 months (when you're a 19-year-old 150 lb genetically gifted skeleton). After this, you become an intermediate and vastly diversify your exercise selection. It's here when you do a lot of upper body assistance and you really don't end up with strange proportions.
I mean, people that do the program correctly and actually do a linear progression on weighted chins don't end up with weird proportions, even in the novice phase. (Although they're not added in until later.)
So, since the barbell method is not the only type of strength I stand by my assertion that SS is not a good program. Linear progression is dangerous. Within 8 months, a beginner will be hoisting hundreds of pounds in their squats and deadlifts. Not all of them will have proper form, and it just takes a small lapse in the biomechanical alignment to do lasting damage. Proper form is not something you can learn and enforce through a book or YouTube videos.
Then you might say that to do SS properly you should get advice on form and a personal trainer. This is a no true Scotsman argument: Anyone who gets injured did NOT follow the program properly.
Starting Strength is not powerlifting, and strength is a general adaptation. The fact that you do not know this makes me think you haven't read the book, and therefore are not in a position to argue against it.
> Few power lifters can do calisthenics staples such as muscle ups, flags, and front levers.
These are skilled movements and must be trained. If you're stronger, learning to do these things will be easier and quicker. (Since they are ultimately strength-based movements, as are most things, and strength is a general adaptation.)
> So, since the barbell method is not the only type of strength
The only type of strength is to produce a force against an external resistance. That's what strength is.
> Linear progression is dangerous. Within 8 months, a beginner will be hoisting hundreds of pounds in their squats and deadlifts.
Good, that's the goal. Their bodies adapted to the external stresses and became stronger. Now they've grown and are physically capable of lifting hundreds of pounds. How is this a negative?
> Not all of them will have proper form
We're talking about four basic movements here. Anyone that is persistent and possess enough intelligence to read SS (and is young enough) can, in fact, do these movements. Certain cases do need a coach, but that's the exception. (Except for very old people--they seem to require coaches.)
Anyway, I don't really understand your thesis: again, the data is telling: weight training is just about the safest form of physical activity. It's also just about the only form of physical activity that lets you precisely, numerically increase the weights such that you become stronger in a controlled, measured way. If you really believe that doing gymnastics (muscle-ups, flags) is safer than squatting, then you're delusional. (And the data strongly agrees with me here as well: injury rate for gymnastics and gymnastics-like sports (cheerleading) is rather high.) If you believe the physical benefits of doing gymnastics exceeds those of weight training, you're extra delusional. (No incremental loading, the lower body consists of muscle bellies that are just too large to load effectively with bodyweight.)
I’m not the only one I know who has been injured doing the big 3. My coworker herniated his disk doing deadlifts (before I met him, just to clarify the causality).
I am not saying calisthenics is safer. I’m saying the big compound barbell movements will NOT get you universally strong. Squatting 3 plates is a specialization. Unless squatting hundreds of pounds is what you want to do, and eventually get into power lifting, Starting Strength is not a good recommendation. And I don’t think it is safe either.
2. Are you seriously dismissing the incredible body of science that supports progressive overload?! Are you conflating strength gains with "performing better at some sport"?!
3. Starting Strength includes deadlift which works the entire back including upper. It also includes presses which work shoulders, triceps, traps, and a host of core muscles. Then there are bench presses which work the pecs, triceps, and shoulders as well.
I started lifting in college, and quickly transformed from being super skinny to being well-built and much stronger than the average person. But not crazy strong. I can usually bench press around 200lbs, sometimes more, sometimes less.
Regardless, 10 years after I started working out I began to develop hand/wrist pain. It went from nothing to mild to severe in the span of 8 months.
So being strong didn't prevent this from happening. But perhaps it delayed it? I probably average 8-10 hours/day on my computer and have since childhood. I also played StarCraft competitively for a number of years, a game that requires far more quick and repetitive clicking and typing movements than most other computer activities. Many StarCraft pros have had multiple surgeries. It's possible I was lucky to make it to age 29 before I had issues.
I tried everything. Most things didn't work, including taking an extended break from my computer.
What did work was going back to the gym. Lifting heavy weights 2-4x a week. Whenever I'm doing that regularly, the pain goes away. If I slack for a period of months, it begins to come back slowly.
People seem to think if they just sit right for 8 hours a day it will all work out ok. But if you have a weak body its not going to do that very well for very long.
Do some research on stretches for the pectoral is minor muscles. People who type almost universally have a rolled shoulder that can cause back and arm pain. This is caused by tight pec minors.
https://www.bemyhealer.com/2016/03/22/3-reasons-pectoralis-m... is a reasonable place to start.
The starting points - and for many people, perfection - are a split keyboard (like https://kinesis-ergo.com/shop/freestyle2-for-pc-us/), ideally with the center elevated ("tented"), and a vertical mouse (like https://evoluent.com/products/vm4r/). They have almost no learning curve. Kinesis has a 60-day money-back guarantee.
These products should leave your wrists and hands at the same angles as when they hang at your side. Let your arms dangle freely, bend your elbows, and type/mouse.
As well as all the ergo goodness, you can reprogram it to an inch of its life. I have the first generation, use it with a Mac and a Colemak layout, and it's da bomb.
Another thing that helped is the book Conquering Carpal Tunnel Syndrome[0]. It has a good set of stretches to do categorized by what's bothering you.
Even more impactful IMO, it teaches a technique they call the "stretch point": very gently & slowly stretching until you feel the first hint of a stretch, then pausing and waiting for the feeling to release, over and over. Versus what I was naturally doing before, which was to stretch until I really felt it, and hold for a while. The theory is that the slow/gentle stretch+release pattern is more effective for the smaller muscles and less likely to damage them.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Conquering-Carpal-Syndrome-Repetitive...
When I'm having a "bad arm day", I throw one of these straps on for an hour or two and it really helps to take away the tension (and therefore most discomfort I've experienced).
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Tendonitis-Compression-Prevent-Fishin...
In my case I spent some time studying the muscles of the forearm and analyzing my pain and movements. A TENS machine (cheap on amazon) targeting that muscle for 15 minutes helps a lot to make the muscle relax.
One major stretch missing in this list is active (using your other hand to push past where you can move it normally) wrist pronation/supination. In my case the shortened muscle was the flexor carpi ulnaris (which operates your pinky and wrist deviation). when it was overused it presented as tennis elbow and wrist pain on the ulnar side of the wrist.
When i do active wrist pronation/supination I can feel the stretch at the ulnar side of the wrist and at the lateral epicondyle, exactly where the pain used to be.
By stretching my wrist daily, including active wrist pronation/supination stretches, and once it had better range of movement starting on light exercise with resistance bands, everything is back to normal.
But try and figure out where your problem is exactly. your forearm and wrists are complicated and not just one muscle.
Learn and use Dvorak. Get an ergonomic keyboard.
Non-affiliate links, ordered by increasing price. I have the 4000 and the Sculpt ergonomic for more than 5 years each. I've just started using the Ergodox.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000A6PPOK/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CYX26BC/
The Kinesis Freestyle Edge [1] looked like a great option, but then I found myself swept into the rabbithole of custom mechanical keyboards. There is a frankly overwhelming number of decisions to make: split or not, with or without function/number/numpad/navigation keys, the usual row-staggered layout or column-staggered or a square grid, then the type of mechanical switch. Finally, there are the 3D-printed split keyboards meant to fit the shape of the hands.
I ended up buying a Ergodash [2] kit [3] and soldering it myself. I've had it for less than a week so far, and though adapting to the column-staggered layout was reasonably quick, I'm still a bit hit-and-miss with pressing modifier keys with my thumb. I'm not yet ready to give it a proper review.
Using a split keyboard has shown me I have a pretty poor keyboarding posture. Even with the traditional MS Natural ergonomic keyboard, I was twisting my right wrist because the keyboard is still narrower than my shoulders.
Xah Lee's site has a good, quick overview of many of the most popular DIY[4] and manufactured[5] options.
[1] https://gaming.kinesis-ergo.com/edge/
[2] https://github.com/omkbd/ErgoDash
[3] I bought the Ergodash kit from Germany from https://keycapsss.com/ , it's also available as a kit or assembled from Poland at https://falba.tech/
I gotta admit that my wrists starts acting up when I don't do them for a while. I prefer them to most of what is recommended in TFA.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSZWSQSSEjE [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/wiki/kb/recommend...
I have an issue with my right wrist caused by falling backwards and catching myself while playing basketball in highschool 30+ years ago. The exercise that helps the most is to hold my right arm out at full (almost hyperextended) length with the palm facing me and then placing my left hand behind my right and grabbing my right thumb while wrapping my left fingers around the bottom of my right palm. I then use my left arm to put greater and greater pressure on my right wrist. I then do the same to the left wrist. Doing that a couple of times a day while programming seems to "open up" my wrist. YMMV.
My current thinking is that split keyboards are important, having your hands low is important, having the keyboard tilted down is important, exercising entire muscle groups from back muscles to shoulders to forearms is important and making sure you have multiple good positions to adjust to is important.
I think conventional wisdom is so far off the mark it will be laughable in 50 years. Look how twisted you have to place your hands to use a regular keyboard. You lift them up, tilt them up, tilt them to the side etc.
Using a typical computer set up is basically putting yourself is a stress position. I want to have multiple, very different positions I can be in. Being able to lie down on a bean bag and use a tablet for some things would be even better.
I don’t remember ever seeing that as ergonomic advice.
Most, if not all, ergonomic advice says something along the lines of (https://www.webmd.com/back-pain/typing-posture-pain-preventi...):
”Type at the right height. A lot of people place their keyboard directly on their desk, so it's just below chest level. But typing at that height for a long time limits circulation and stresses the joints and nerves in your arms, shoulders, and wrists. That can cause numbness and pain in those areas, as well as your back. It can even lead to long-term problems like carpal tunnel syndrome.
The fix: If it's possible, use a keyboard tray that's placed beneath your desktop. Your keyboard should be slightly below your elbows.”
Most people don't do this and I'm not sure if is a common recommendation. I haven't ever seen a lowered keyboard tray despite having seen thousands of workstations.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12931885
Recently two of my coworkers are suffering from these issues, one even had to go to therapy and missed a couple weeks of work in total. Luckily he seems to be fine now, but he doesn't seem to have changed his habits..
I think spreading awareness helps and is something that senior developers should do for their juniors.
Ergonomics is something that seems like a mystery to almost everyone. People might pretend they have it figured because testing claims is so difficult. I have been at companies that cared about ergonomics and would buy split keyboards, standing desks and more if people requested them.
You can't expect other people to solve problems that most are barely aware of.
It's bewildering to me that it's not taken more seriously. Though I agree it's not expendability.
Edit to clarify.
You contradict yourself. I am software engineer. I have specialized in my field. The firm that employs me employs many experts across many fields. That they choose not to hire an ergonomics expert to provide us with an ergonomic workplace is a testament to their will, and priorities.
Should I cut my own hair, fix my own car, build my own house, sew my own clothes, and prescribe me own medicine?
If that doesn't work, then what? Do you want your problem solved or do you just want to be at a company that takes a shot in the dark? You can probably find a company that will do that for you, there are plenty out there.
If you want to actually solve your problem though, you are going to have to confront it yourself from as many angles as possible. The first step is realizing there is a lot of trial and error and that few people really know what they are talking about. I've seen 'ergonomics' experts before, they will say to sit up straight and look forward. They don't have deep knowledge built up from trial and error with a understanding of underlying principles, they just have a certificate that gets the company off the hook.
As for your clothes, if no one makes clothes that fit you, then yes, maybe you should learn to sew.
Absurd. And should I also grow food that's fit to eat, play the music that suits me, and provide my own shelter, as well?
We sacrifice our entire lives to these firms–studying for them, then working for them, all backed by the same few investors–and it's not too much to ask for clothes, shelter, food from the society they claim to serve.
You are in control of these situations. Feeling sorry for yourself and wasting energy being frustrated that a particular group of people don't value you is just wallowing in your own self pity instead of confronting your problems.
We also have an "ergonomicist" visit occasionally and check everyone has appropriate equipment, is using it correctly, and knows how to adjust it.
I do it on occasion and I never had hand problems but that's probably because I used to play classical guitar pretty seriously when I was younger and my teacher always made me do some exercises before. If I hadn't gotten in the habit I probably wouldn't.
That being said I don't recommend grip strength exercises using tools. It's too easy to overwork yourself that way.