Author: David Weck

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is often caused by imbalances in the spine, shoulders, and forearms. Here are several exercises that relieve wrist pain by focusing on expanding the shoulders and thoracic spine through myofascial release, as well as forearm and wrist remedies.

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Today I want to talk to you about carpal tunnel syndrome. This is a problem that affects millions of people and it can be very difficult to get rid of. Today I want to give you some strategies that are very effective in making the problem go away. The first thing you have to understand with carpal tunnel syndrome is that it's not just in your wrists. The problem stems from your spine and your shoulders. If you don't have those right then anything you do with the wrist is going to be limited in terms of the benefit that you get.

So, carpal tunnel is basically a situation where the median nerve comes through these eight bones in the wrist to create a tunnel and what will generally happen is the shoulders will be slumped and then the flexors will be over engaged, the extensors will be weak and you're in this position typing and then that nerve starts to get pinched off and now you get tingling, numbness and pain in your hands and you lose function.

So what we have to do is we have to open up the shoulders and create expansion through the chest and the thoracic spine. If you don't do that then you really don't have the center of the body and you need it. So here's what I want you to do for opening up the chest. You're going to get in and do a little myofascial release right up in here. Sort of near the shoulder joint but in the pecs and the deep stuff underneath the big pectoral muscles.

I'm going to use the RMT® Club then I'll show you how to do it with a lacrosse ball. What I'll do is I'll pin the club against a wall and I like it because it gives me distance from the wall and I don't need to use a pillar like this.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to find pain and make it go away. So I'm pinning in here and I find oh, that's a tender spot, okay good. I put pressure into it and now I'm going to move the arm up and I'm going to just find that Ahh. Find that relief. If it's delicious discomfort that you're going after you can just play with the movement of the arm. You can do 5 or 10 repetitions each cycle or movement. And what you're doing is you're just finding the little areas in there that cause you pain and it might be a little bit different on different sides and it might be different for different people. The problems are unique to you.

The point in doing this here is that you're going to create this release of these tightened shortened muscles and give you capacity to take a deep breath and get that thing back. Get the shoulder lower and off the hook as it were.

Now you can also use a lacrosse ball or something similar. Put it up here. It works better with the lacrosse ball when you're only up against a bar like this as opposed to a wall, that's why I like the RMT® Club. It's the same drill right here. So you're doing that. And then you want to do just backward arm circles. Nice and gentle. Backward arm circles, not the forward, you want to go backward so we're creating that open expansion. So it's back stroke not the butterfly. So, that's the first order of business. We have to do that. And then you have to think about not being like this [slouched] all the time. If we don't do that then we're not going to solve the problem.

Alright next thing we're going to do is we're going to balance the muscles of the forearm because when I'm doing this it's the muscles in the forearms that are doing that and in daily life if you don't exercise and train a lot the flexor side gets overworked and the extensor side becomes very weak. So what I'm going to show you is a position of balance and strength in the hands that will help open up the tunnel and give you better function balance on the extensor side and flexor side.

We call this the center diamond in WeckMethod. We put the hands together like a prayer and you bring the fingertips down and you keep the fingers straight so from that position you're not flexing the fingers like this, you're keeping the fingers straight and doing that activates the extensors here. So I'm flexing muscles within the hand and I'm extending muscles in the forearm to get to that position. The closer you can bring the elbows, the more you're going to create just that perfect line that's going to give you the strength, stability and balance that will help the median nerve and everything else function better. Connecting the hand to the body with a better connection. So that position there, it's grasping, it's not grabbing. So we're doing this. Similar to if I were to pinch grip something. If you take a book and you hold it, your fingers are going to be straight and it's like you're pinching a pinch grip. That's the position.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring the hands out and forward, shoulders are back and I'm going to spread them as far as I possibly can in line. Just like that. Now, I'm going to bring them back in to this position here and extend them out, and bring them here. And you want to use a lot of tension when spreading the hands out flat like that. Again, I'm activating the extensors. I'm giving those flexors a break. Now when I do this again, I'm building the strength and balance and the posture through my body that's going to let the nerve roots travel most cleanly. Those electrical signals aren't going to get impinged. And you do this.

This will burn, it will make these very tired. Shake them out, do a little massage and release into the muscles up in here both the flexor side and the extensor side. If you're experiencing numbness or tingling and it's getting worse from doing this then back off and stick to the shoulders and get these things open as far as possible and then proceed with this very slowly. If you're grabbing like this, just reinforce, go back that diamond position there.



You can put it on a table or a wall and put it here. My whole forearm is flat here and I'm going to just make this pyramid with the hand. Do you see how that's a pyramid? It's a triangle, it's a very strong structure because it's bone aligned and now the muscle is balanced and the connective tissue is balanced. So just to review, I'm going to open up the shoulders, get better posture, breathe deeper, sit up taller, stand up taller and then we're going to expand, spread the hands out and then bring them into that diamond shape position. If you do 10-20 repetitions there and you're really doing it you'll light up a fire and you do a little bit of release. See how that works for you. It's worked for many people I've helped before and I hope it works for you. Do it, do it honestly and I hope your carpal tunnel gets better as soon as possible.

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