Programming pain
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These days, long hours in front of the computer translate into shoulder pain for me. It's becoming a serious problem. Guess I'm just an old fart. Anyone out there in a similar situation? How do you cope? I'm hoping for some _well-meant_ advice that will keep at the keyboard for a few more years....
You can have your chair adjusted just right, keyboard in the perfect spot, monitor(s) arranged at the proper level and distance... and still mess up your body. The old typing books, written for people hammering on manual typewriters for hours on end, paid a lot of attention to this: you want your feet flat on the floor, your back and shoulders straight, your wrists in line with your hands and forearms, and your head positioned such that you aren't constantly turning back and forth between what you're reading from. Incidentally, this is why monitor position and not having arm rests are key - chances are, if you have to look up or down your neck will be crooked, and if you're resting your elbows or forearms, your wrists and shoulders will be out of line. But these are just guidelines. You may, like John, find that having a wide keyboard with numeric keypad puts your mouse too far from your center to be comfortable. Or, like me, you may have wide shoulders and small hands, and find that small keyboards and narrow work surfaces cause you to hunch your shoulders and do uncomfortable things with your elbows and wrists trying to force them unnaturally close together. Start with the guidelines, but then pay attention to how you actually end up sitting and react accordingly. For instance: i keep a dart board near my workstation. This encourages me to get up and move around, rather than thinking at my keyboard. It also helps me to avoid letting my wrists become limp, which would put me in danger of letting the heals of my palms rest on the keyboard (throwing darts limp-wristed will be instantly painful - fail fast, the old debugging aid).
-- modified by I Hax Life!! on 16:20 Friday 13th Smarch, 2038
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These days, long hours in front of the computer translate into shoulder pain for me. It's becoming a serious problem. Guess I'm just an old fart. Anyone out there in a similar situation? How do you cope? I'm hoping for some _well-meant_ advice that will keep at the keyboard for a few more years....
Anytime I have something like this happen I take one step towards a cure that hasn't let me down yet. I go see a physical therapist. They work on the affected area and make suggestions for avoiding the problem if it happens again. In every case you get sent home with stretches that can be done regularly or as needed. I'd start with an informed professional and go from there.
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Anytime I have something like this happen I take one step towards a cure that hasn't let me down yet. I go see a physical therapist. They work on the affected area and make suggestions for avoiding the problem if it happens again. In every case you get sent home with stretches that can be done regularly or as needed. I'd start with an informed professional and go from there.
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You got voted a 1. I guess some manager took offense. :) I agree with you about armrests. I have scapular tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome. Chairs without armrests are the only way I can function without severe pain.
:) Nah, probably the Univoter striking again. It's really a matter of personal preference, but I've worked programming for a long time and tried just about everything and there may be the perfect height armrest out there, but I have yet to find it and I think it's telling that throughout history any chair designed for typists have always been armrest-less.
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These days, long hours in front of the computer translate into shoulder pain for me. It's becoming a serious problem. Guess I'm just an old fart. Anyone out there in a similar situation? How do you cope? I'm hoping for some _well-meant_ advice that will keep at the keyboard for a few more years....
If you have a medical condition, then a doctor might be worth considering. However, the general advice on exercise, diet, etc. may be more potent than you realize. As an old dog myself, I can assure you that being older doesn't necessarily mean you're forced to live with limitations. On think you might try is Googling for the physical therapy exercises used for rotator cuff injuries. There are 8 or 10 standard ones that will keep showing up in most places. Doing them on a regular basis might build up the strength and flexibility you need and thus eliminate the pain. May not be appropriate for what you're coping with, but it's a thought.
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalStrategyConsulting.com
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These days, long hours in front of the computer translate into shoulder pain for me. It's becoming a serious problem. Guess I'm just an old fart. Anyone out there in a similar situation? How do you cope? I'm hoping for some _well-meant_ advice that will keep at the keyboard for a few more years....
Dunno what other advice you got so far, but here's mine. I am going through the same thing, only for me, it's the third time. In the late 80's I worked in a library, lots of data entry, I ended up diagnosed with RSI and on compo for about 6 months. That's time 1. Second time - when I took my second ever dev job, I immediately got all those symptoms. I'd just changed jobs so I didn't tell my boss ( arguably, I got it at my last work, not the one I was at ). So, I paid my own medical, and went to physio once or twice a week. I did speak to my boss, he mentioned he had the same problems and hadn't really thought it through. An occupational therapist came in to work and told us all how best to sit. Short version - make sure your chair gives good back support, does not have arms, and is at a comfortable height. Make sure your monitor(s) are level to your eyes, so you look directly ahead to look at it. This means you need a riser. It doesn't have to be fancy ( mine now is the speakers of my stereo with some fencing paling across them ). The main thing that got me through that time was swimming. I swam 5 times a week, and got up to 15 klm a week. About two years later, I left Dytech to work from home. Immediately, I had the same trouble. As my work picked up, I'd stopped swimming for some time, and now I can't easily get to a pool. I got an OT to come out and look at my workspace, the main thing she noticed was that I was flexing my wrist while I typed. I put a support there so I could tell when my wrist dropped, that fixed itself quickly and made it all tolerable. I do have constant lower back pain, and ongoing shoulder pain, but I go to physio once a week, and with summer coming on, I will swim in the local pool for a few months, which I hope will put it all behind me ( again ). Bottom line - it's managable, if you're willing to get the advice and make the changes, but I suspect once you've had it, you've proven yourself prone to it, and you'll just have to deal with it from time to time. The first time is the scariest, now I know I've got through it and will again. The travel helps, I go to the US 3-4 times a year, and the change of environment usually leaves me better for a bit. We went on an 8 day cruise, I did 2-4 hours a day on the notebook, and still I felt a lot better when I got home.
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ Metal Musings - Rex and my new metal blog
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These days, long hours in front of the computer translate into shoulder pain for me. It's becoming a serious problem. Guess I'm just an old fart. Anyone out there in a similar situation? How do you cope? I'm hoping for some _well-meant_ advice that will keep at the keyboard for a few more years....
Walk every day. Swim regularly. Get up and stretch. Read about ergonomics and get a very good chair and position the monitor, mouse, keyboard and you correctly. BTW I'm probably older than you.;)
Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com
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J. Dunlap wrote:
with arm rests
I disagree entirely with this statement. I've removed the arm rests from my otherwise excellent office chair, they were causing a lot of pain by raising my arms up too high while typing. Look at any good typing chair, it never has armrests. Anything that puts any part of your body in an unnatural (resting) position is bad in the long run. Arm rests are good for managers who never actually have to type anything.
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These days, long hours in front of the computer translate into shoulder pain for me. It's becoming a serious problem. Guess I'm just an old fart. Anyone out there in a similar situation? How do you cope? I'm hoping for some _well-meant_ advice that will keep at the keyboard for a few more years....
I started to go swimming once a week. Though I hate doing lanes, it helps a lot. What counts is the way how you get old.
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
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These days, long hours in front of the computer translate into shoulder pain for me. It's becoming a serious problem. Guess I'm just an old fart. Anyone out there in a similar situation? How do you cope? I'm hoping for some _well-meant_ advice that will keep at the keyboard for a few more years....
Exercise - some muscles will be getting streched and some shortened.
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J. Dunlap wrote:
with arm rests
I disagree entirely with this statement. I've removed the arm rests from my otherwise excellent office chair, they were causing a lot of pain by raising my arms up too high while typing. Look at any good typing chair, it never has armrests. Anything that puts any part of your body in an unnatural (resting) position is bad in the long run. Arm rests are good for managers who never actually have to type anything.
John Cardinal wrote:
I disagree entirely with this statement.
yeah, its not the arm that need to be rested, it is the wrist that should be kept firmly on the table.
-Prakash
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These days, long hours in front of the computer translate into shoulder pain for me. It's becoming a serious problem. Guess I'm just an old fart. Anyone out there in a similar situation? How do you cope? I'm hoping for some _well-meant_ advice that will keep at the keyboard for a few more years....
If you are at home, or not too self conscious, get a yoga ball[^] instead of a chair...
'--8<------------------------ Ex Datis: Duncan Jones Merrion Computing Ltd
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These days, long hours in front of the computer translate into shoulder pain for me. It's becoming a serious problem. Guess I'm just an old fart. Anyone out there in a similar situation? How do you cope? I'm hoping for some _well-meant_ advice that will keep at the keyboard for a few more years....
Disclosure: I currently work for Wellnomics Hi DaTxomin, Hmm, musculoskeletal pain can be a real problem, and isn't necessarily an indication of age! ;) I think the most important thing is to NOT ignore it. Do something now before it becomes debilitating. It sounds like other CP members have been there and have realised that it can, unfortunately, become a bigger problem. My (limited) understanding of RSI (or OOS, or whatever) is that there are many contributing factors, such as - your posture and workstation ergonomics, - your ability to control your work environment, - your ability to change your working posture (i.e. can you shift around, can you get up and stretch without feeling like a wally...), - your ability to take breaks from work, - your ability to relax muscles and to stimulate blood flow back to overused muscles (in order to flush out metabolites, such as lactic acid etc.) - your susceptibility to stress, and your stress loading - your general health and wellbeing. In fact, as far as I can see, there can be a really wide range of factors that may contribute to RSI. For those of us who spend long periods of time working on a computer it can be all to easy to get into bad habits. We can get so focussed on work that we shut everything else out--we "centre" only on our keyboard, mouse and screen, and we forget that we're stooping over, shoulders hunched, arms tense, and we loose track of time, realising that it's gone 9pm, our pizza's cold and the Coke's flat... If only we would remember to take a break, stand up, stretch out those muscles, go for a quick walk to the kitchen to grab a drink of water, ... anything to give us a few moments away from our desk. And that is (one of the things) my employer provides--they have a desktop app that reminds you to take these periodic breaks. Wellnomics' WorkPace[^] sits in your task bar, and periodically pops up reminders to take a "micropause" (stop what you're doing, drop your arms to your sides, maybe shake out your muscles, and then go back to what you are doing) or to take a few minutes break (go and do something else for a few minutes, heck, go and talk to someone...!). It has a little system tray icon which indicates your work intensity... and if the app thinks you are overdoing things, it can be a bit assertive and freeze input from keyboard/mouse (but the level of "assertiveness" is completely configurable). So, is that the whol