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Comment by acoard | Hacker News Reader

> Wrist rests are actually one of the leading causes of RSI due to the extra compression stress they place upon the carpal tunnel.

Can you speak more to this? I bought a ZSA Moonlander[0], which has built in (tho removable) wrist rests. I bought the keyboard specifically for ergonomics, mechanical keyboard "coolness" was far down the list.

I used to get wrist pain typing directly on my MBP, with my laptop on my lap (shitty setup due to COVID, am fixing now). I would be resting my wrist right on the hard edge of the MBP. Since getting the moonlander, I've had no wrist pains.

[0] https://www.zsa.io/moonlander

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That kind of RSI is caused by repeated rubbing along the carpal tunnel in your wrists. The more friction there is, the quicker it happens, so the idea is to keep your wrists as free from all forms of compression/pronation as possible so that the tendons glide as effortlessly as they can. Resting your wrists on something, having your wrists bent at bad angles, etc increase the compression and thus friction. Piano and guitar players with poor posture also suffer similar injuries for the same reason.

Other than that it's about recognizing the signs that your wrists are getting raw from too much use and taking breaks.

There's more than one type of RSI, carpal tunnel is only one particular injury.

I've had severe typing RSI and had to go to the doctor for it.. mine was tendonitis in the flexor muscles.

They looked at the X-Rays and MRIs of my wrists and said there was no way I would ever have to worry about carpal tunnel, different people have differences in the bones and can have a tighter tunnel.. a tighter tunnel can make that type of issue more likely to occur.

There are tendons going from your fingers all the way to your elbows. These tendons must traverse the narrowing that is your wrist. Tendons are surrounded by a sheath that lets them move freely in one dimension as they extend or contract. There's two sets of these tendons: one below and one above, for bending and extending your fingers, respectively. On the underside of your wrist the tendons for bending your fingers all get close together. Now when you rest your wrists as you type you put pressure on all those tendons and their sheaths, and this causes trouble by increasing friction -- eventually scarring.

Don't do it.

Learn to type by floating your hands like a pianist. It’s the main thing that saved my wrists 10 years ago when I started developing first hints of issues after 15 years of daily coding.

Retiring at 23 because of wrist pain wouldve sucked.

Typing on yor lap is generally bad for all sorts of reasons. I’ve found it can work if you’re reclining in a comfy chair. But float your wrists!

Great tip and way of phrasing it. This is basically what I do, except I cheat a bit by resting my elbows on my arm rest. My wrists hover, or gently graze the wrist rest, but most the pressure is closer to my elbows.

I had really bad arm / wrist issues about 10 years ago due to overuse of crappy small keyboards on laptops, etc. Mechanical keyboards (after a bunch of physical therapy / massage) have been key to keep my arms healthy.

After trying probably 10 different "ergo" keyboards, the one I landed on that has been amazing for a decade is the Kinesis Ergo Advantage2

https://kinesis-ergo.com/keyboards/advantage2-keyboard/

It is split, so helps with that angle, and also has depressions where your fingers go so your hands aren't cocked back causing additional strain. It also has a couple options of the mechanical switches used. Anyone struggling with pain from typing, I'd suggest looking at it. It has a learning curve but it's worth it.

I think it's a matter of keeping the hands aligned with forearm and not having pressure on the write joints themselves. I try to keep the palms of my hand (the same part you hit with in martial arts) on the "wrist rests" instead, and I've had zero issues for years. For me, the biggest problems I had came from using various mice and never finding a good one until I moved to a MacBook and learned the trackpad. Now I've literally adhered a magic trackpad 2 to the middle of a Kinesis Advantage 2 keyboard and I love it. It translates back and forth between using the laptop and a "docked" setup better than anything else I've tried over the years.

The kinesis advantage (now Advantage2 LF) has been my mainstay keyboard over the last 20 years, both professionally and personally. I too adhered a trackpad, although mine is an Ergo Mini touchpad: https://ergonomictouchpad.com/ergonomic_touchpad.php

I immediately bypassed the aesthetics side of MK and went straight to functionality; the kinesis has probably been the most reliable piece of hardware I've had over the years (with the exception of a key-repeating known issue that has been resolved with the advantage2)

I had the exact same issue with my laptop - and my wrist pain wouldn't go away even after switching to a normal keyboard and watching my posture.

I also bought the Moonlander and have had very minimal pain since (~4 months now). Was thinking about this as I went to bed last night; such a relief. Sometimes I'd have to wear wrist braces at night due to pain.

Regarding the wrist rests, I find that the base of my palms, and not my wrists, touch the wrist rest. Maybe it's the size of my hands and how I have it tented, but overall I like the wrist rests quite a lot. I do try to lift my wrists a little when I'm really typing though.

The ideal if you need to type a lot is to leave your palms and wrists "floating" in the air while actively typing, and position your torso and keyboard such that you can type with your hands close enough to your body that they can be supported without much effort by your arms and shoulders, perhaps lightly resting your finger tips on the keys. Resting your palms on a palmrest while not actively typing is fine.

You’ll get wrist pain primarily from wrists not being straight (either flexed downward or extended upward). Keeping your wrists close to straight is important when doing any kind of repetitive action with the fingers.

I usually do this "floating" thing, especially since I mostly use my index and middle fingers, so I have to move the hands around to reach the keys.

But I've found that for some use cases, when I always press the same keys (say moving around text with hjkl, or similar) it's very comfortable to rest the wrist on the wrist-rest. However, I usually put most of the wrist's weight on the exterior, so I suppose the nerves aren't as much constrained.

That moonlander looks cool, but I place my keyboard on my lap while typing, so it wouldn't work for me. I like that the switches are replaceable, and it's funny that the first thing they mention about what matters in switch selection is loudness but then fail to list that attribute for any of the switches they offer!

personally I had trouble until I got a wrist rest that was:

- high enough (forearm to wrist straightish to concave, NOT splayed back)

- just the right softness (too hard = palm fatigue)

- kept my wrists warm enough. I think cold palms/wrists might be a bad situation

for my mouse, I found using a smaller mouse-dedicated wrist rest full of beads worked for me.

why people would use wooden or plastic wrist rest is beyond me. Same for typing with your palms on a cold laptop surface. (also remember there are NO OSHA-approved laptops, they are not ergonomic)

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