Carpal tunnel syndrome?

Seriously, I would start resting it. If you are on the computer nearly all the time then it is a good idea to take rests.

Workrave will be a brilliant little tool for this. It works really well.

Also.. get one of those forearms and grip strengther. It will help :-)

Glad that software will help you out!

It will strength and stretch the muscles in the hand, wrist and forearms. If you think about it, you have kinda limited your hand and wrist to do other tasks like carrying the crates and stuff.

Sorry for the delay to this thread!

The grip strengtheners help the same way doing sit-ups will help your stomach: It will strengthen your grip, which means strengthening of fingers, wrist, and forearms. This grip strengthening will, in turn, mean that your hands and wrists are in better shape and thus will be better to handle the stress that you're putting upon them using your computer(s) and carrying crates. It's kind of similar to how it's a bad idea to do a lot of stomach and chest exercising, without training your back - at some point the muscles supposed to support each other will begin to "work against" each other, which will end in pain.

Also, instead of such a boring and gym-like thing as the grip strengthener, I've gotten meself a Powerball, and even though the marketing of it might seem a bit dodgy, friends (ie., fellow traceurs) have recommended it to me, and I do feel how it's creating resistance (= stress = strength) from the fingers and wrist and through the arms up to the shoulder (which also means that I have to focus on not tightening the neck, to avoid negative tension).

There are also some isometric exercises you might want to do be doing, but I'll come back to those later, if you want me to. :)

ps. I need a physical education and/or traceur/parkour userpic...

Keep it warm? Keep it cool?

That depends. If the pain is relieved by massage, keep it warm. If the pain is made worse by massage, put ice on it.

I'm not entirely sure why - but it works.

It's some Chinese medicine thing.

I know my body really well (a combination of a life of odd pains and injuries and having been an elite athlete) so know my pains and how to treat them. I've always just known whether something needed a hot water bottle or an ice pack.

But then I read somewhere that in Chinese medicine if something is made better by massage (like a stiff muscle) you should put warm on it. If something is made worse by massage (like a broken bone) you should put ice on it. And I realised it made sense. That was how things worked, I'd just never really paid much attention to it before.

In general, the good idea would actually be to keep it warm. This is due to fact that if it's a muscle injury (as it sounds like), keeping it warm will increase the flow of blood, thus both removing more bad stuff and supplying more nutrients (fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals, oxygen, ...) which'll allow for a quicker recovery. (This is also why a strained ankle heals more quickly if you walk on it, than if you place it above the heart and rest it.)

Of course, if the damage is really severe, the muscle should be rested, but it should be worked (gently) as soon as possible, to get the above effect going. ("Active recovery.")

I don't know when or why muscles should be cooled down. I'm not saying there isn't a time and reason for it, just that I don't know of it off-hand. Feel free to enlighten me though. :)

(For the record, this might be the one area I know stuff in, where I know next to none of the technical jargon in English. :x)