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Repetitive stress can cause problems in your hands, wrists, forearms, shoulders, neck, or back. Runners, heavy lifters, or other people who stress their legs and hip joints can have repetitive stress problems in their hips, knees, ankles, or feet.
Symptoms of Repetitive Stress Injury
Any repetitive activity, be it work, hobby, or sport, can potentially cause injury. I sometimes hear people say, "I’ve been doing this [insert activity] for years and it never hurt before." That is the nature of repetitive stress injuries; they develop slowly over time. Some people are more susceptible to injury than others.
Common symptoms of RSI problems include:
- Chronic tightness, discomfort, stiffness, or pain in any part of your body, especially your hands, wrists, fingers, forearms, elbows, neck, shoulders, or back.
- Tingling, coldness, or numbness in any area.
- Clumsiness or loss of strength and coordination in your hands.
- Pain that wakes you up at night.
How Can Massage Help Repetitive Stress Injury?
Carpal tunnel and thoracic outlet syndromes involve nerve compression. What is compressing the nerves? In most cases, tight muscles. Massage releases muscle tension, which relieves the compression and pain. Regular stretching is also essential.
In other repetitive stress injury (such as tendonitis or ligament injuries), muscle, tendon, or ligament fibers are torn. Specific work on the injured fibers speeds healing by breaking up adhesions (stuck together tissue) and excess scar tissue and by increasing circulation, which brings in nutrients and removes waste products.
Regular massage can help any problem caused by tight or injured muscles or injured tendons or ligaments.
Consider massage before resulting to more drastic treatments. Do realize it’s not a miracle cure and requires a regular treatment schedule. You must also take responsibility for stretching and making any needed changes in your activities.
Highly recommended: Pain Free at Your PC by Pete Egoscue.
Personal Experience
While mine was not a repetitive stress injury, my personal experience illustrates how injury treatment massage can work. Two years before I started massage school, I broke my left arm and one of the bones in my left wrist. After my arm healed, I still had wrist pain that became particularly annoying after I started massage school.
When we reached the injury treatment section of the curriculum, I asked one of the instructors to look at my wrist and she showed me which ligament to work on. I spent a few minutes three or four times a week doing cross-fiber friction massage on the ligament and then icing it. At first, I didn’t feel any change. Then about two months later, I realized my wrist no longer hurt, and I haven’t had wrist pain since.
How to Avoid Repetitive Stress Injury
