Simple Self Care: Forearms
Do your forearms, wrists, or elbows hurt? Are you a desk worker, a climber, or someone with a job or hobby that requires using handheld tools?
Injury, overuse, repetitive motions and postures, and nerve entrapment. These are potential causes of tightness and strain in the forearm area. Through regular use, fascia and muscle tissues get stuck together creating physical symptoms of pain and even numbness.
So what can you do about it? You’ve come to the right place!
Causes of discomfort
The tech-heavy world we live in means forearm pain is common these days. We both see it often in our work, especially in office workers. If you have a job or play a sport when you repeatedly have to grip stuff with your hands or twist your wrists, you likely have wrist or forearm pain. Think typing, texting, holding a hockey stick or baseball bat, sweeping, working on an assembly line - the list goes on.
These actions ask us to repeatedly engage and relax muscles of the forearms, wrists, and hands. There are literally dozens of tiny muscles in the hands and wrists to help us with fine motor movements such as opening jars, typing on a keyboard, writing with a pen, or operating machinery.
When we use these muscles, they flood with blood supply, causing the muscle to swell. But if we have tension or tightness in the fascia (connective tissue) around that muscle, the muscle has nowhere to go as it swells up. The result? Fascia tissues and muscle tissues put pressure on each other, sometimes getting stuck together or tearing, and we feel pain in the wrists, hands, or arms.
Self-care practices for forearm tension
So let’s get to work releasing all this arm tension!
To do these exercises, you’ll need:
A bouncy ball
a pair of tune-up balls
Some floorspace or a comfortable spot to practice
Here are a few tools you can add to your toolbox for managing forearm tension. You can do these videos at home or at work.
Self-massage with a bouncy ball
Learn self-massage routine for forearms
Practise passive stretching
Practice contract-relax stretching
Manage muscle tension
Practise myofascial release
Megan leads a quick self-massage and rolling practice using a bouncy ball. Intended for all levels.
Stretching
Explore active range of motion of the wrists
Passive stretching for forearms
Joint articulation
Megan leads a short practice that includes a seated section and a tabletop section.
Myofascial Rolling
Myofascial rolling practice for the arm
Manage muscle tension
Recovery practice
Join Alana for a brief guided practice using tune-up balls to roll out the forearms. Meant for all levels.
Want more resources?
Read: Self Care: Headache blog
Watch: myofascial release playlist on YouTube
Watch: desk workers playlist on YouTube
