RSI (repetitive strain injury), carpal tunnel syndrome and tendinitis can be an extremely frustrating and painful thing to deal with. If you can’t play music because of injury, you might become depressed, anxious and loose the will to recover. In 1989, practicing from 6 to10 hours a day for 3 years, I was hit hard with carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands and couldn’t open my left hand at all. Soon after, I had surgery on my left wrist and could not play the saxophone for 4 months while recovering. During that time I fell into a fairly deep depression and became self destructive as life as I knew it lost meaning. In retrospect I think I was being self absorbed and melodramatic, people suffer from far worse and I was fortunate to have the resources to get help and treatment. In any case, my prognosis was bad, after surgery, my hand specialist Stuart Brown, told me that the inside of my wrist looked like that of a 60 year old man; at that time I was only 22. He said that even after recovering from the operation I might not be able to play for much longer than 10 more years. Over 30 years later I’m still playing (at 55 now) and although I still suffer nerve damage and from occasional flareups, I’ve found some great exercises along the way which have really helped me to live and perform nearly symptom free. All the very best that I’ve learned over the last 30 years I share in these four videos. Don’t give up, do some sort of a hand/wrist routine every day, research new methods, and ask questions.
~Enjoy, and good luck.
Other good videos to check out:
Nerve Flossing:
Stretches:
RSI Videos:
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Hello, Matt!
I suffer from RSI too. It’s a very serious problem. I think they say little about this. It began about an year ago. I played the guitar 4-5 hours a day and worked as a programmer. It’s difficult to have this illness because you feel inability to do something and get depressed.
I do stretching from last September and light weight lifting from last November. Thanks for your video! Now I feel better already but not as I’d like it to be. I still don’t play the guitar.
Could you answer a few questions?
1) When you began to do exercises?
2) Did you play the saxophone while you were treating your forearms?
3) You’ve written that you “still suffer from occasional flareups”. What moments is it happened?
4) Do you think that if you stop to do this exercises symptoms will come very fast?
Artur, thanks for the message. I’m sorry to hear that you suffer from RSI. I’ve done these exercises for at least 4 years almost every day. I play the saxophone everyday but not too much; most of my practice is now ear training, singing and visualization, I save my hands for gigs and rehearsals. The “flareups” happen if I play too much saxophone for about 3 or 4 days in a row, I just get a dull soreness and tired feeling in my hands and loose my technique. I have missed the exercises for up to a week when on a trip or vacation and I’ll still feel pretty good, my arms are in pretty good shape so circulation and healing are good.
Thanks for your answers. You have bad symptoms from 1989 to 2006. How did you live these years? Did you play the saxophone? How did you keep your technique?
Arthur, since my carpal tunnel operation in 1990, I have used singing (while visualizing the fingerings on my saxophone) as my primary way of practicing. I also do long tones without using my hands to maintain my sound. This coupled with daily listening to music and a little bit of actual practice each day has kept me growing and improving over the years.
Mr Otto! How did you increase weight of dumbbells? Do you think that it’s necessary to increase weight? What weight do you use now? Thanks.
Hi Arthur, thanks for the message… You don’t need to increase the weight, you’re just keeping the muscle mass up to where circulation (blood and oxygen) is good and healing takes place naturally while sleeping and resting. I do between 12 lbs and 15 lbs – 3 sets of 10 – plus all the stretches each day.
I have been diagnosed with arthritis in my left hand in the thumb area, so have started doing these stretches and work with small weights. Was taking anti-inflammatories which took the pain away for a couple of hours, but didn’t do anything to address the root causes. As Matt says, using weights seems counterintuitive, but it is the only thing that has helped me!
I’ve read the book “It’s not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome” and I’m impressed that the injury can be caused by problems in the neck and the chest. It may be the thoracic outlet syndrome and even the neck osteochondrosis. So I think it’s necessary to have good posture and to do exercises for the back, the chest and the shoulders 🙂