Carpal Tunnel & Wrist Pain 7/8-Beginner and Intermediate Workouts

In these episodes we actually get into the strength-building aspect of carpal tunnel syndrome. The pain weak points I’ve seen in clients with chronic wrist pain over the years are weak: shoulders, back muscles (lats) and hip stabilizers.

In the beginner series, I try to offer more opportunities to strengthen these areas standing or on elbows instead of wrists. As you get stronger, you could replicate the same exercises, just gradually working into bearing your body weight in your hands.

The intermediate workout starts with building your way into a pull up and strengthening your wrists to hold your body weight in push/pull fashion. If you don’t have a pull up bar (they’re not expensive & are fantastic for stretching after a day of typing), try to find something in a local park or around your house that you can hold onto and hang from. This episode offers some epic tricep strengthening and then moves into several different plank options to simultaneously engage the shoulder stabilizers with the wrists.

Hope you enjoy! The next series will be on Frozen Shoulder Syndrome. There’s a lot of overlap between these 2 conditions so please subscribe on YouTube to stay up-to-date with new content.

Carpal Tunnel & Wrist Pain 6-Emotional Connection

In this short video, I talk about connections between Chinese Medicine as well as the typical personality types that have come to me over the last decade for help with wrist pain and carpal tunnel.

The wrists and ankles represent the 4 gates in Chinese Medicine where chi circulates through these areas to create flow. If someone is blocked at one or more of these gates, it can lead to feelings of being trapped. To me this connects to feelings of control via the arms. As in being a doer-type—someone who is constantly in a get-er-done place.

Correspondingly, it has seemed over the years that these are also folks who have a harder time receiving since they’re so accustomed to doing. A healing practice for this would be to focus and feel what it feels like to receive love with open hands in a hug or even snuggles with a pet. Another option is to do something creative with your hands and feel that nurturing come through your hands. On a daily basis this could even be something like cooking or gardening, not just artistic pursuits.

Give this video a watch and see what speaks to you to incorporate in your own life…

Carpal Tunnel & Wrist Pain 5-Lateral Fascial Connection

In this episode of Fix Your Carpal Tunnel, we look at the outer line of the body and how weakness and tension along this pathway plays into carpal tunnel syndrome and chronic wrist pain.

We start this journey at the calves—the forgotten place. The vast majority of us have tight and weak calves (walking a lot doesn’t mean your calves are strong) and they’re usually tightest on the outer portion of the muscle(s). The easiest way to get at that outer calf is using a massager, IMHO. We continue the massaging aspect of the video targeting the lats, armpits (a lot of muscles connect there) and the jaw.

To begin our stretching portion, we start at the infamous IT band with a simple stretch you could do on a couch or chair. Then we move up to a yummy lat stretch for the back.

Lastly, the muscles that are often weak along this line include the outer hip and shoulders—the abductors. I offer a simple exercise to activate these muscle groups as well as the rotator cuff and lats. The video wraps up with some suggestions for strengthening the lateral movement of the wrists.

Carpal Tunnel & Wrist Pain 4-Posterior Kinetic Chain

We continue on our exploration of common body connections to carpal tunnel and wrist pain by looking at the Anterior Kinetic Chain today. This video looks at the fascial ties between the wrist extensors (back of hand), up the arm across the abdomen to the opposite inner thigh. In this exploration, we start with options for self-massage, easy stretches and then coordinated movements to establish more mind body awareness.

One of my favorite ways for releasing the front of the shoulder (deltoid) and chest is cupping. Putting a gentle oil on the skin like jojoba or coconut oil and then dragging the cup across the area is an incredible fascial release. Then I walk you through a way to release tension in your forearms through a forearm massage, followed up with how to foam roll your inner thighs.

Then we begin the stretching portion with a groin stretch. I don’t demo stretching the abdomen, but an easy way to do this would be to lay over a yoga ball or use an inversion table. You’re looking for any situation where you can be in a supported backbend. My favorite way of stretching the pecs is on the floor—we’ll go through stretching the pec major and minor. I’ll then demo some variations on how to stretch the forearms.

The activation portion of this lesson starts with a a simple cross body, core exercise to feel the obliques between your hip and opposite shoulder. To make this more challenging, you could do this on a foam roller. To strengthen the wrist, I highly recommend the small, $10 investment in these, but you can use a rubber band for the exercise demonstrated in this video.

Strong hands=strong core!

Carpal Tunnel & Wrist Pain 3-Posterior Kinetic Chain

In this episode we look at how the opposite side of the body affects the side you have wrist pain or Carpal Tunnel. The Posterior Kinetic Chain runs up the triceps, to the back of the shoulder and neck and then comes across the mid-back, connecting down to the calves.

We start this lesson with a simple calf, outer hamstring and glute massage on a foam roller. Then we follow that self-soft tissue release up the back to the neck and down the tricep line.

Following the structure of the rest of the course, once things are loosened up, we stretch. In this case using a figure 4 stretch for the glutes and then using a variety of hand angles to stretch the back. Since this line crosses the body, a great way to stretch is through twisting and rotation. So, next comes a yummy, full-body stretch that doubles as a great core exercise. We wrap up the stretching portion by getting at the target area—the hands, by stretching the palm muscles, as well as the thumb pocket.

Finally, we double back and activate the chain aspect of this backbody kinetic connection starting with a lunge exercise. This particular variation is to wake up the connections needed in gait (how you walk), mindfully integrating the calf to the opposite shoulder blade. That exercise is followed up with a small back extension exercise on a foam roller. In Pilates, it’s known as swan, in yoga, it’s a variation on cobra. Again, the goal here is to get the triceps, mid-back and rear end all talking to one another. We end at our target area and use some simple props you can buy in a grip kit to strengthen the fingers and wrist to help alleviate and prevent chronic wrist pain.

Enjoy and thanks for watching!