Subject: Serious arm pain

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 19:33:20 -0400

I am into about a year of tennis elbow.  Sometimes I can hardly lift a coffee
cup (or worse yet...a can of beer) let alone a hammer.  This is getting to be
a real killer.

Does anyone have any ideas?  Anyone else been through this?  What did you do?
 Did you ever get better?  Does it eventually go away.  My doctor has been no
help.  The session on hand and arm injuries at Alfred did not offer much
encoragement.  

This is very depressing.

Any thoughts deeply appreciated.

Don Plummer

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 20:19:46 -0700

Don, and anyone else suffering from Tennis elbow...
   Get a medium size and strength rubber band.  Loop it around the 
cuticles of the hand connected to the offending tendon.  Spread your 
fingers outward.  Start with a weak rubber band, and increase the reps 
and then graduate to a stronger band.  If you feel any pain, ANY pain, 
stop, rest it for an hour or so, and begin again.  Remember, quit 
immediately if you feel any discomfort at all!  The phrase "no pain no 
gain" does not apply here, you have already damaged yourself, pain means 
you are doing it again.  Within three days, you should be used to the 
mild rubberband, find a stronger one, or use two medium ones.  I started 
with one of the bands you get with broccoli at the store.  If you get one 
that's too strong, cut it in half lengthwise.  REmember, start low and 
slow, and work up.  What you need to do is strengthen the muscles which 
OPEN your hand, since the ones that close it, your grip, have taken over 
big time.  I'm four days into this, and there is no pain left at all, 
none, after off and on strain for four years.  I carry a band in my 
pocket, and use it whenever I don't need the hand for something else, 
like waiting at a stoplight etc.  Start off with 5 to 10 reps, open your 
fingers and hold them open, then slooooooly relax, open, hold, close 
slowly till you begin to feel the effect.  By no means continue after you 
feel any pain at all.  Any pain, more damage, any pain at all.  Start 
slowly, carefully, and work up to it.
   Hooked on Pflexing Worked for Me! :-)
  Bob

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From: Colin Morton <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 08:10:07 +1000

Don 
When I first started blacksmithing I had a similar problem.
Firstly I went to the chemist(read drugstore) and bought a Velcro fastening 
elastic tennis elbow brace.
This worked well after I had rested my arm for a week or so. Use the brace 
when you work.
Get a smaller hammer, the size of the hammer is probably why you have the 
problem in the first place.
Also my doctor said that he had read in a medical journal that If you get a 
thisk towel and hold it with the good arm and twist tightly with the bad 
armhold the pressure then twist the other way. Repeat this ten times twice a 
day.
The excercise helped relieve the pain for me
Speedy recovery

Regards
 Colin Morton

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From: Steve Herrick <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 11:49:13 -0700 (PDT)

I worked for a company that builds splint for injuries like this. There
are three things they told us to do. 
1. keep the affected area warm before doing any work

2. restrict the motion of the affected area when in use so that full
extention or power can not be used.

3. stretch before using the affected area.

Hey that means that that I can't do any thing, doesn't it?

Nope, the first two numbers up there can be taken care of by a good brace
used for tennis elbow. It should be three or so inches wide, made out of a
warm (and washable) material, and there should be an adjustable band to
tighten down over the muscle. The one I use is made out of a cloth
coverd neoprene rubber so it keep the muscle warm. The band fits over the
top of this and tightens down so that I can only use about 95% of my
muscle strength. This helps to prevent injury caused by over extension.

The last part about stretching is to limber up your arm and stretch it out
helping to keep the carpal tunnel open and the tendons supple. To do this
keep your sholders, hips and feet parallel, hold your hand out like a cop
saying STOP. Your arm should be extended all the way forward from your
body, with your wrist down and the fingers pointing up. Take your other
hand and pull the hand, fingers and thumb back toward the elbow keeping
the elbow locked. The pressure should be very light, hold this position
for ten to thirty seconds, and repeat up to 20 times or more. Reverse the
direction of the wrist so that your hand and fingers are down and the
wrist up and do the same thing, light pressure, same repetions and sets. 
Also use your finger on the joint and muscle area in a circular massage
motion helps alot too.

Hrolthgar -   [email-masked]
           Steve Herrick

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From: Kayne and son hardware <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 17:59:45 +0000

I think prevention is the key. The hammer handle is the problem and 
the solution. If the handle does not fit the hand properly it requires 
atighter grip, the tighter grip causes the pain ,going to alighter 
hammer requires less grip ,fitting the handle properly would allow the 
user to work easier and move more metal  steve Kayne

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From: Page Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 08:21:42 -0500 (CDT)

There is another solution that has not been discussed.  The elbow should 
never be used in the striking of the metal on the anvil. There are over 
15, out of 75, serious smiths in the NTBSA and none of them have every had 
serious problems with their elbows.  If one stands correctly at the anvil, has 
the anvil at the proper height, holds the hammer loose in the fingers
with the correct handle and your elbow is not out at a right angle,
you should have no trouble.
The smiths that learned under Dr. Seybold and Bill Epps were taught that 
you use the wrist and shoulder to strike with not the elbow.

Here goes:

If right handed, stand with the left foot close to the anvil stump, the 
right foot slightly back of the left foot, both facing the horn, so that your 
striking motion is over the anvil, up and down, holding the hammer so 
that the handle moves back and forward in your fingers,  
raising the hammer about head high and striking with a downward motion 
using the wrist as the pivot not the elbow.  A good exercise is to hold a 
three lb. hammer in the hand(fingers only) and move it back and forth, 
using only the wrist, between the index finger/thumb and the little finger.

An old blacksmith friend of mine, who smithed 7 days a week for 50 years, 
never had a sore elbow.  He would say "you young fellows just don't know 
how to hold a hammer.  Holding the hammer tight is for driving nails."  
(May get some arguments here).

My two cents worth. 

Page A. Thomas, Director
Center for Methodist Studies                  [email-masked]
at Bridwell Library                           (214) 768-3440
Southern Methodist University                 Fax: (214)768-4295
PO Box 750476
Dallas TX 75275-0476

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From: Michael Spencer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 96 01:35:57 EDT

Page Thomas wrote:

> There is another solution that has not been discussed.  The elbow
> should never be used in the striking of the metal on the anvil.
> [ more about good ergonomic hammering]

If you have an image-capable web browser, you can look at:

   http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/mspencer/hammer.html

It has a collage of high-speed photos of me hammering so that you can
follow the geometry of the hammer blow. There are some graphs linked
in, too, that help analyse the motion. I don't claim to have the
provably perfect hammer style but I've never had elbow trouble despite
a broken elbow in a hockey game when I was a teenager. Still have the
steel pin.

Before I did the shoot, I made some diagrams of just how I imagined my
arm and hammer moved. I was way off. Most of the acceleration of the
hammer is done with my shoulder and much less than I imagined with
elbow motion. When my elbow begins to extend, the hammer is already
moving really fast and I'm essentially just guiding it during the last
20% or so of its flight.

I have noticed that beginners, especially those with a very slight
build, allow their wrists to cock downward when they lift a hammer. I
take this to indicate the hammer is too heavy for them and may cause
dificulty. I find the same for myself when I have to use a 5#
hammer. For the students, I recommend a lighter hammer and explain
why. For myself, I alter my stance and (somewhat awkwardly) my way of
lifting the hammer after each blow to eliminate that excess wrist strain.

I have some more images for the web page that I haven't managed to
analyse, crop and paste up yet. They show the hammer in the last
couple of inches of flight, taken closer up and at an even higher
frame rate.  Slightly disappointing that we couldn't do it with hot
iron, though. Too much heat on the camera and too much glare. So we
used cold steel (to maximize the impulse) and lead (to simulate the
inelastic behavior of hot iron). 

BTW, are there any data analysis whizzes out there amongst all those
advanced degrees? :-) I understand there's a statistical way to solve
the problem of the propagation of measurement error in the
calculations that grows larger than the differences you want to
calculate but I don't know how it works. This problem arises in trying
to calculate the acceleration and max velocity of the hammer from
measurements taken from the digital images with known delta-t between
frames.

- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer
[email-masked]
URL: http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/mspencer/home.html
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From: "[email-masked] 415.855.5707" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 09:18:14 -0800 (PST)

I had a simmilar injury a few years ago.  After weeks of visits to the
chiropracter, MD and months of just nursing it I finally got this exercise
contraption at the sporting goods store.  It fits over your forearm and you
push and pull a spring loaded handle.  It almost seems like a wrist exerciser. 
It fixed me up in no time.

Joe