Hi folks,
FitOldDog frying sausage from Small Potatoes Farm, for an army of kids, whilst relaxing his forearms. Photo by Deb.
Your forearms, wrists and hands are key tools, without which life can be extremely difficult. It is easy to strain your wrist, being a common problem for tennis players and those who work for extended hours on computer keyboards. In fact, mousing injury can be a real pain, literally, locking up your hand when typing or mousing. Furthermore, I have found that excessive tension in your hands during cycling (the death grip) and swimming (open your fingers a little to fix this), can lead to forearm strain. The solution to these problems, in the long term, is to fix your biomechanics combined with rest breaks, which really means to remove all sources of unhealthy tension, which really means being aware of what you are doing. The best way to become body-aware is to follow the advice of Thich Nhat Hanh in his wonderful little book, ‘Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life.’ Simple tasks, such as washing the dishes (do many Americans still do that, I wonder?) can be used as an opportunity to meditate on what you are really doing with your hands, wrists and forearms.
Relaxation derived from good posture is the key when it comes cooking as a meditation for improving your sport.
As you carry out a simple task with your hands, such as mixing bread dough or washing a heavy metal pan, look into your body for sources of tension, and then adjust your actions to reduce the tension, which you may be surprised to find extending all the way down to your feet. Especially avoid tension in your shoulders and neck.
Awareness is the key to fixing hand and wrist pain. As I type this post I can feel tension attempting to work it’s ugly way into my shoulders and neck. This can be fixed by simply lifting up my clavicles to induce better posture, which causes my shoulder blades to relax back down my back, my neck to straighten, bringing my head position more over my shoulders, reducing strain on neck and back tendons and muscles, which causes my entire torso to sit in a relaxed manner on my ‘pelvic bowl,’ which removes unwanted tension in my legs as they attempt to do battle with my pelvis in order to sit safely in my chair, as a result of which my feet become calm and spread and happy.
Better posture leads to less forearm strain, resulting in more fun playing tennis and other sports, and even to happy feet! All of this I gleaned from my studies of Feldenkrais and Continuum, and it really seems to work. I also suspect that reduced body tension will lead to less mental tension and will improve your sport as you cease to fight your natural instincts, which is what causes many of our problems in life, don’t you think?
-k @FitOldDog
I’ve been typing for over 40 years, sometimes most of the day, as part of my work but I’ve never had wrist strain. I think people who get wrist strain from typing are doing it wrong. You do NOT rest the heel of your hand on anything; it’s like playing the piano. Another thing is that women have been typing for I don’t know how many years but since men starting typing too, now carpal tunnel syndrome exists. Funny that it didn’t exist before.
The proper chair makes a difference too when typing. Right height (arms parallel to floor), right back support.
Sitting on a ball can also help. Thanks for the comments. Got to get that landing page done. Still awaiting comments on the guide, but will move on it now. -k