Carpal Tunnel PaIn?

[Daniel_Earp]

Hello, Doctors.

I’m a novice lifter, currently on week 4.9 of the beginner template, progressing nicely.

I am familiar with a lot of the content regarding pain of the Barbell Medicine staff, I have read “pain in training what do?” and I feel like I have a decent understanding on it. I have applied it to my lower back pain and more recently to a lat / mid back pain, with success in both.

I come to you to ask for help. I have begun feeling what I believe to be carpal tunnel syndrome in the last 3 days, it has been progressing quite quickly, from mild pain to “I can’t use my hand to type for more than 2 minutes without feeling great pain”. Symptoms are: wrist and hand feel numb-ish, I feel like my forearm, hand and wrist are “fatigued” even though the other hand is fine, it burns from within when I try to use it, especially in the wrist, and it tingles a bit. If I leave the arm “hanging down” the pain eases.

I have read both these posts on the forums:

https://forum.barbellmedicine.com/fo…-on-a-computer

https://forum.barbellmedicine.com/fo…unnel-syndrome

I have begun trying to do the light dumbbell flexion and extension, but don’t know how often I should do them.

I have also ordered a wrist splint, should arrive today.

I should note I experienced the same thing 3 years ago, I “cured” it by basically not using a computer for a month, something I cannot do right now, I am a data scientist in the middle of a big project and usually work 8-10 hours a day, sitting in front of a computer.

I am not at all worried this is something serious, but am very worried that it is affecting my productivity greatly (couldn’t work properly today).

Do you have any other tips you might suggest I might follow other than wrist splint, light dumbbell flexions and extensions and work to tolerance?

On a side note, today I worked out, did deadlifts and squats, even with this problem, it didn’t seem to affect my training. Should I continue or could this hinder my recovery? While I definitely don’t want to stop training, my work is more important and if I need to stop training for a week or two to fasten my recovey, I’m fine with it.

Sorry for the long post, just kinda worried here, appreciate any help!

Thanks!

[Michael_Ray]

@Daniel_Earp

Hello, Doctors.

I’m a novice lifter, currently on week 4.9 of the beginner template, progressing nicely.

I am familiar with a lot of the content regarding pain of the Barbell Medicine staff, I have read “pain in training what do?” and I feel like I have a decent understanding on it. I have applied it to my lower back pain and more recently to a lat / mid back pain, with success in both.

I come to you to ask for help. I have begun feeling what I believe to be carpal tunnel syndrome in the last 3 days, it has been progressing quite quickly, from mild pain to “I can’t use my hand to type for more than 2 minutes without feeling great pain”. Symptoms are: wrist and hand feel numb-ish, I feel like my forearm, hand and wrist are “fatigued” even though the other hand is fine, it burns from within when I try to use it, especially in the wrist, and it tingles a bit. If I leave the arm “hanging down” the pain eases.

I have read both these posts on the forums:

https://forum.barbellmedicine.com/fo…-on-a-computer

https://forum.barbellmedicine.com/fo…unnel-syndrome

I have begun trying to do the light dumbbell flexion and extension, but don’t know how often I should do them.

I have also ordered a wrist splint, should arrive today.

I should note I experienced the same thing 3 years ago, I “cured” it by basically not using a computer for a month, something I cannot do right now, I am a data scientist in the middle of a big project and usually work 8-10 hours a day, sitting in front of a computer.

I am not at all worried this is something serious, but am very worried that it is affecting my productivity greatly (couldn’t work properly today).

Do you have any other tips you might suggest I might follow other than wrist splint, light dumbbell flexions and extensions and work to tolerance?

On a side note, today I worked out, did deadlifts and squats, even with this problem, it didn’t seem to affect my training. Should I continue or could this hinder my recovery? While I definitely don’t want to stop training, my work is more important and if I need to stop training for a week or two to fasten my recovey, I’m fine with it.

Sorry for the long post, just kinda worried here, appreciate any help!

Thanks!

Hey @Daniel_Earp - thanks for the questions and sorry to hear about the CTS symptoms. That second forum link you shared outlines my general approach to this situation. Sounds like you’ve a good handle on the situation and coping well overall. In regards to training, no I wouldn’t recommend stopping or altering training if you aren’t noticing an effect on symptoms during or after training. Sounds like overall learning to chunk work will be the biggest return on investment here. Meaning, finding your tolerance and adjusting work load as you are able to still maintain the needed work productivity. This may mean taking small breaks throughout the day, switching hands for work tasks, etc.

[Daniel_Earp]

@Michael_Ray

Hey @Daniel_Earp - thanks for the questions and sorry to hear about the CTS symptoms. That second forum link you shared outlines my general approach to this situation. Sounds like you’ve a good handle on the situation and coping well overall. In regards to training, no I wouldn’t recommend stopping or altering training if you aren’t noticing an effect on symptoms during or after training. Sounds like overall learning to chunk work will be the biggest return on investment here. Meaning, finding your tolerance and adjusting work load as you are able to still maintain the needed work productivity. This may mean taking small breaks throughout the day, switching hands for work tasks, etc.

Thanks for the answer, @Michael_Ray , I will try my best to cope, I found that when I type with my arms in declined position, it’s not as bad, so I’m trying to set up a standing desk so I can do that.

I am currently following the beginner template but I also do GPP work (supposed to do only on phase 2 onwards but I’m doing them anyway), typically doing regular biceps curls and hammer curls twice a week, as well as sets of pull ups and chin ups. With that in mind, how often should I do the wrist flexion/extension? The lighest dumbbell I have is a 2kg one, but I have a small 1kg plate that I think would work as well.

Also, you said: " no I wouldn’t recommend stopping or altering training if you aren’t noticing an effect on symptoms during or after training", I definitely didn’t feel worse during training but I am now feeling much worse than I was in the morning, then again, in the morning I felt much worse than yesterday and so on… I don’t know whether the training contributed to the worsening or not to be honest.

[Daniel_Earp]

I feel like my mind is playing a huge role here… my left hand was completely ok and suddenly developed symptoms equal to the right one in a few minutes

[Michael_Ray]

@Daniel_Earp

I feel like my mind is playing a huge role here… my left hand was completely ok and suddenly developed symptoms equal to the right one in a few minutes

@Daniel_Earp thanks for the additional information. Yes, this is where I think a consultation is most beneficial, so we can talk through your concerns and provide individualized advice for coping and returning to desired activities. I don’t typically recommend making dramatic programming changes from a single symptomatic spike, given symptoms often ebb and flow based on innumerable factors. For wrist exercises, this doesn’t have to be a ton of frequency. I usually start folks off with 1 - 2 x / week. If completing 2 x / week then I’d space out the sessions by a few days.

[Daniel_Earp]

@Michael_Ray

@Daniel_Earp thanks for the additional information. Yes, this is where I think a consultation is most beneficial, so we can talk through your concerns and provide individualized advice for coping and returning to desired activities. I don’t typically recommend making dramatic programming changes from a single symptomatic spike, given symptoms often ebb and flow based on innumerable factors. For wrist exercises, this doesn’t have to be a ton of frequency. I usually start folks off with 1 - 2 x / week. If completing 2 x / week then I’d space out the sessions by a few days.

Thanks, Doc, I much appreciate your help.

Unfortunately consultation isn’t an option for me at the moment, since I’m Brazilian and my currency is so devalued that one consultation is worth over a minimum wage here, just can’t afford it at the moment.

I did put all your advice to good use and it’s been getting slowly better, I’m definitely better today than I was 2 days ago, optimistic about it!

Thank you very much for the help!

[Daniel_Earp]

Hey, Doc, Just wanted to follow up here. Been doing biceps tempo curls and wrist curls for rehab and it’s been slowly getting better, it comes and goes but I feel like the average pain has been slowly dropping. I’m now able to use a mouse for 1 hour straight before it flares up badly, whereas in the first days I could not hold a mouse for more than 10 minutes. My regular main lifts training is also going well. Overall, I think I’m getting better.

I think I may have found “what caused” this (I know I know), for the past months I had been doing both chin ups and pull ups as upper back GPP, even though I was very overweight, I was able to do them, the chin up started to give me some bad pain in what I believe to be the pronator teres muscle, but I ignored it, it kept getting progressively worse but I just ignored it, and now it’s sore all the time, I searched a bit and found out “pronator teres syndrome” has the same symptoms (mostly) as carpal tunnel syndrome, so I feel that might be what I got, just a thought. I stopped doing pull ups and chin ups for the last 2 weeks, replaced them with inverted body rows for upper back gpp. I have been doing “pull up hanging” and “chin up hanging”, I feel like it’s been helping me rehab this thing, pain doesn’t seem worse after it, whereas pain drastically worsens if I try to do a full pull up / chin up.

Do you think my approach here is reasonable? Thanks!

[Michael_Ray]

@Daniel_Earp

Hey, Doc, Just wanted to follow up here. Been doing biceps tempo curls and wrist curls for rehab and it’s been slowly getting better, it comes and goes but I feel like the average pain has been slowly dropping. I’m now able to use a mouse for 1 hour straight before it flares up badly, whereas in the first days I could not hold a mouse for more than 10 minutes. My regular main lifts training is also going well. Overall, I think I’m getting better.

I think I may have found “what caused” this (I know I know), for the past months I had been doing both chin ups and pull ups as upper back GPP, even though I was very overweight, I was able to do them, the chin up started to give me some bad pain in what I believe to be the pronator teres muscle, but I ignored it, it kept getting progressively worse but I just ignored it, and now it’s sore all the time, I searched a bit and found out “pronator teres syndrome” has the same symptoms (mostly) as carpal tunnel syndrome, so I feel that might be what I got, just a thought. I stopped doing pull ups and chin ups for the last 2 weeks, replaced them with inverted body rows for upper back gpp. I have been doing “pull up hanging” and “chin up hanging”, I feel like it’s been helping me rehab this thing, pain doesn’t seem worse after it, whereas pain drastically worsens if I try to do a full pull up / chin up.

Do you think my approach here is reasonable? Thanks!

Hey @Daniel_Earp - glad to hear your situation is improving. Sounds like you have a handle on how to manage activity appropriately. You can always refer back to the pain in training article linked HERE for a refresher on programming as well. Cheers.