Spending long hours typing at your computer and have sore wrists? Wrist pain is not an uncommon complaint in office workers who spend long periods of time typing. Wrist pain is often an annoying injury that can vary from a dull ache into the much more serious complaint of carpal tunnel syndrome. The reason why wrist pain is so common in office workers is that, much like any other muscle group on the body, an imbalance starts to develop between the wrist and finger flexors and the wrist/finger extensors. What happens when we are typing a lot is the wrist and finger flexors start to get very tight and facilitated while the wrist and finger extensors tend to become lazy and inhibited. When this imbalance becomes ingrained in the body the area of the wrist where the flexor muscles sit becomes tender and inflamed. If this goes on long enough the flexor tendons can become inflamed and cause carpal tunnel syndrome, which is a very unpleasant injury to have to deal with! So here are a few solutions to help with wrist pain and stop it before it becomes a more major complaint
Trigger point your wrist and finger flexors- Tigger pointing the wrist flexors on a foam roller or trigger point ball can be a great way to relieve some of the tension in these muscles. The wrist flexors are the bulky muscles about half way up the palm side of your forearm.
Strengthen your wrist and finger extensors– By trigger pointing your wrist flexors you are helping with half of the problem but you also need to address the weakness in the wrist extensors so the flexors don’t keep becoming over active all the time. To do this, get a rubber band or hair tie and put it around your thumb and fingers. You then do resisted finger spreading or finger extension against the resistance of the band. This is a bit hard to explain in a blog so if you need help with this, let me know!
Ergonomic keyboards– There are ergonomic key boards available which support your wrists when typing. These can be great for preventing imbalances in the wrist from occurring and are worth purchasing if you are typing a lot and prone to wrist pain.
I hope that was helpful. Looking after your wrists are work is important in order to prevent long term issues such as carpal tunnel syndrome. If you need any ergonomic advice or would like to find out if chiropractic can help you, feel free to contact my Brisbane Chiropractic clinic.
