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Comment by injidup | Hacker News Reader

I had bad RSI for ages. What helps me and other comments have agreed is pulling excercises. Specifically I have a bar at home attached to the ceiling. Just hanging from the bar as long as you can and doing that regularly seems to stretch out the right muscles/tendons. Don't over do it but at the beginning I could only do 20 seconds. Now I can hold on for 1 to 2 minutes depending on the day.

I have very little wrist pain any more.

I also have a kinesis pro keyboard and a MX master mouse. They both add to the improvement.

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Flip side to this, is I’ve had Carpal Tunnel for a while now, had surgery 2 years ago. It’s somewhat better and I am now active at the gym and in general it has helped a lot but extreme gripping such as deadhangs, deadlifts and heavy rows actually aggravates my symptoms. I started using straps for any weight over 50kg and my hands have got a lot better.

I’ve found that when you’re going from (weak, sedentary) => (strong, active) it can sometimes be difficult to discern what activities are good or bad for your pain. Sometimes you need to work through pain to find relief and strength on the other side, but sometimes working through pain just leads to more pain. The boundaries aren’t always clear at the time.

Yes..don't push past your pain limits. I have an old elbow injury from climbing. In the past if I did too much with it like pull ups it would inflame and then be useless again for weeks.

But slowly building up the hang time and then moving to 1 pull-up then to 2 and slowly over months to 5 and then 10 seems to keep it happy.

Be careful and slow but consistent and results should be good.

( See your doctor of physio for advice )

This is interesting, it reminds me of the (sort of) famous "tree hanging" exercise. Which goes like this. Go to a wooded area, find a tree with a strong branch above your head. Grab it and hang off it for a while. Do it daily for a brief time.

Supposedly this exercise helps in all sorts of problems that arise in a sedentary lifestyle (hands, arms, back etc).

Now, the only problem with doing it here is that most trees here are pines and strong branches start 20m above the ground...

You can get a climbing hangboard and hang it over a doorway. Do a pyramid training (2, 4, 6, 8, 6, 4, 2s with 5s pause in between) and your fingers and wrists will get much stronger

I use a Beastmaker 1000 hangboard and follow the Emil's Sub-max Daily Fingerboard Routine on the app Crimpd each day. Absolutely amazing results within a month. I really suggest everyone gives it a try.

If you're just hanging the exercise/stretch is often called a dead hang

You can also do it in the gym, if they have one of the "machines" shown at the very right in this picture: https://www.fit-star.de/Resources/Public/Content/Specials/He... - not sure how they're called or how common they are, but you put your lower arms on the armrests, grab the handles, rest your back against the blue ball and just let your legs hang. Then you can do some ab exercises.

That's just nature's incentive to keep up your grip strength

I also fixed my RSI issues with exercise, though I get a lot more benefit from cardio.

I find it extremely helpful to take a mid-workday walk, ~20 minutes, usually after lunch. My brain turns off to digest anyway, so I lose little useful work time. Adopting the walk pretty much solved my issue.

I speculate that my issues are blood-flow related - I’ve always had cold hands/feet, suggesting suboptimal circulation. All the prolonged sitting then starves the muscles in my wrists of the oxygen needed to keep typing. Roughly in line with this study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16640514/

Obviously, there are many possible root causes for RSI conditions. But a midday walk is a nice thing regardless, and may be worth a try.

Interesting, I've been coding professionally for about 20 years now, and never had any wrist problems. I've been pretty inconsistent with working out, but have always kept a pull up bar in my home, and even when not working out often I do a few pull ups here and there. Maybe these things are related. Never really thought about it.

>What helps me and other comments have agreed is pulling excercises.

variation of this - my wife half my weight does her Aikido exercises on my wrists when the wrists start to remind about themselves.

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