Wrist Tendonitis from guitar playing / weight lifting

by Nick
(Vazquez)

Hi, my name is Nick and I am 20 years old living in Richmond, Virginia.

When I was in high school I had wrist tendonitis as a result of playing the marching band (clarinet), but I was prescribed to wear a wrist-splint and the pain went away eventually and suprisingly did not come back. It was not as intense as others have described, just inconvenient as I had to play the instrument.

Now that I've returned from my freshmen year of college, I have started (about a month ago) a strict workout routine of 5-6 days of a cardio a week and 2-3 days of endurance lifting. I know what I'm doing when it comes to lifting, as I've had lots of demonstration and help with it to make sure I'm doing it right.

I also started playing guitar (electric) again, as I did not have it in college with me.

But recently, I suppose form playing guitar and lifting, I've developed tendonitis, in both wrists. The worst time I feel the pain is when, for example, lifting a weight to put it on the bar such as bench or any machine, and when I release the weight its a sharp pain in my wrists, and sometimes even further down my forearm.

At this point I have been looking online and found your site, which seems to have LOTS of great information, especially compared to other sites which simply define tendonitis.

So my question to you is, what can I do to help permanently get rid of this tendonitis, and will I have to stop lifting and playing guitar completely for a while (which would suck to be honest)?

I read about icing and basically staying off it, but what steps should someone in my position take to essentially 'cure' it and prevent it from ever coming back?

- thanks in advance,
Nick

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Joshua Answers:

Hey Nick. Thanks for the good description of what is going on.

1. That sounds like a classic case of the onset of Tendonitis. It shows up, it hurts, it goes away, a person does some activity and it comes back.

You already had a Tendonitis dynamic in place before you got back into lifting and playing guitar. You just pushed it along it's predictable path of progression.


2. I hope you didn't read about 'staying off it' on my site. I'm not a fan of rest or staying off a Tendonitis 'injury', except for the very short term, like 3 days, while a person actively starts to get rid of the problem.


3. You -may- have the wear and tear damage kind of Wrist Tendonitis. I suspect, however, that you just have the too-tight-muscles-and-connective-tissue kind of pain dynamic.

You use your muscles. They get tight. Connective tissue shrink wraps. You use your muscles more. The nervous gets all sorts of 'too tight and we're going to get hurt' information from the tissue, and tightens down even more to protect you, which includes kicking in a Process of Inflammation.


4. As far as a cure, first things first (which may or may not be the wrist tendonitis cure for you).

Do the Ice Dipping as described on the How To Reduce Inflammation.

The more you do, the faster your pain will go away.

Also, do the 'Hammer Time' activity (really need a better name for that....) on one of the Tennis Elbow pages. I'm going to make you look for it because it will be beneficial for you to look through those pages, as guitar players tend to get a Tennis Elbow dynamic, but on the opposite side of the forearm (which is Golfer's Elbow.)


5. In other words, you have Inflammation, and your muscles and connective tissue are too tight.

This equals pain.

Easy to reverse, and in the short term you can stay as active as you want -if- you counter that with an appropriate amount of self care.

I say it makes it easier if you go light for 3-5 days, Ice Dip it hard, and then begin to up your activity level and see how X amount of Ice Dipping interacts with Y amount of activity.

Make sense?


6. Absolutely, positively, start making and eating Bone Broth as the best Tendon Supplement.

I can't emphasize this enough for you.


7. If you ice heavily, and Hammer Time for 1-2 weeks, your pain will be greatly reduce and/or gone, then we can start looking to see if you have any actual tendon tendonitis damage.



Ask questions. I'm happy to answer




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Joshua Tucker, B.A., C.M.T.
The Tendonitis Expert
www.TendonitisExpert.com