Aug 22 2011
Exercise Smart to Save Your Hands
Maintaining good physical conditioning is very important as part of your personal injury prevention strategy. Strengthening exercises and stretches should be part of your conditioning program, but not all exercises and stretches are appropriate for massage therapists to do.
For most massage therapists, the hands and arms are overtaxed by their work. So as a general rule, you’ll want to avoid any exercises that:
• Place a great deal of pressure on the hands, wrists or forearms
• Require repetitive movements using the hand, wrist or forearm muscles
• Put your hands or wrists into awkward postures
A great example is push-ups. Push-ups are a great core strengthening exercise. But when you do a push-up, the weight of your upper body is supported by your hands. When there are so many other great core strengthening exercises you can do, why put so much stress on your already overused hands and wrists? Try a plank instead. You can do the plank on your forearms, which form a broad, flat surface that is much less likely to be injured by the weight of your upper body.
What about the exercise where you hold a small weight in your hand and do wrist curls (either in flexion or extension)? This is a good exercise for therapists who are just starting out, to help them develop strength in the forearm flexors/extensors. But for therapists who have already been working for some time, it’s just too much repetitive movement on top of the repetitive movements you already do all day long with your hands as you massage.
You’ll also want to make sure you keep your wrists as straight as possible with any exercise you do. Your muscles work best with your wrists in this neutral posture; flexing, extending or deviating them more than 10-15° reduces your strength and can lead to injury.
Remember to also be careful with your back, neck and shoulders as you exercise and stretch. These are also overused in massage work and can be easily injured by exercises or stretches that are too strenuous for these vulnerable body parts.
I had Carpal Tunnel before I started massage work. One thing I do when I start to feel the tingle in my thumb is do some work with Chinese Exercise Balls. Or if I’m at home, I’ve got a Dynaflex ball that has REALLY helped to tone down/turn off the Carpal Tunnel.
This article was great, thanks !.
Treating a client requires as much care for yourself than for the client. If you forget to take care of your hands there are still ways to cheat : Stretching the hands/fingers or soaking hands in hot water with epsome salt. Also taking glucosamine, calcium, fish oil in order to relief your joints.