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Comment by mgarfias | Hacker News Reader

Omg thank you. Having some massive pain in my shoulder (when externally rotating my arm), and I think it’s due to moving my arm out to get the trackpad/mouse.

I’m going to try this keyboard setup deal with the track pad in the center.

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I think the best thing you can do is resistance training exercise. Also going from a wide keyboard (full size Apple keyboard with number pad) to a narrow keyboard (narrow Apple Keyboard no number pad) worked for me. For a while I was doing the exercise in the video below and it helped me but I think just regular weight training can do wonders. I mostly just do shoulder, back, arms, and chest exercises and still haven’t had the pain I used to have. Hope you find something that works for you!

https://youtu.be/IdDqdrGMFBw

Yeah, lots of lifting in my life (3d/wk), and we do hit shoulders a lot. Problem is lots of impingement during some motions. And its been getting worse, not better.

Have a look at crossover symmetry, a lot of people swear by it for fixing shoulder and upper back mobility injuries/issues. I think it’s pretty extensively used in CrossFit and baseball communities. If you search for a copy of the exercise chart on Google images you can put a cheap version together yourself using standard resistance bands and a door belt.

https://crossoversymmetry.com

It is not necessarily better, since it probably requires you to bend your wrist. So you solve shoulder pain and get wrist pain in exchange. Also, you probably want to tent a keyboard to avoid forearm pronation [1] and then your trackpad hides between the keyboard halves unless you raise it.

(I am not sure there is a good solution outside avoiding the mouse by using a mouse layer or something like Shortcat on the Mac.)

[1] See e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK72285/

I'm sure it's not for everyone, but I solved this in a unique way. I have a steeply tented split keyboard, and a trackpad on its own angled mount. The trackpad sits just past the number row on my right keyboard half.

I was having similar issues a couple of years back. I'm now using 2 trackballs - Expert Mouse and Vertical trackball to distribute the movement. The pain hasn't come back and I enjoy having dual mice with some extra buttons.

I tried using the expert mouse between my ergodox splits, but the movement was even more awkward as I had to bring my elbow closer to my abdomen. YMMV.

Over the years, adding variety/variability has helped me more than many specific solutions. Seems obvious in hindsight given the R in RSI :D

I had this problem and solved it by using trackpoint keyboards [0], sadly they're pretty pricey on eBay now though. There are newer models that are slightly worse keyboards, but are wireless.

I also haven't had trouble using a trackpad, centered relative to whatever monitor/screen I'm using.

Good luck!

[0]: https://sharktastica.co.uk/wiki?id=lenovo8855

You might enjoy mouse keys. It’s a QMK feature if you have a QMK board. There are a few adjustments you can make that make them very usable.

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