While many acute hand injuries—like bruises and broken bones—are immediately obvious, others may develop gradually or never appear at the surface of the skin.
These soft tissue injuries often go unnoticed until they significantly impact your daily activities. In the hands, tendons can experience micro-injuries, nerves may be compressed or irritated, and muscles can get overworked. In many cases, these injuries are caused by repeated use of the affected part of the hand, resulting in what’s called a repetitive strain injury.
If you’ve been experiencing persistent pain, stiffness, or discomfort in your hands that seems to worsen with activity, you might be dealing with a repetitive strain injury. Understanding the signs, causes, and treatment options can help you take the right steps toward recovery and prevent further damage.
What is a repetitive strain injury?
A repetitive strain injury (RSI) occurs when muscles, tendons, ligaments, or nerves become damaged from repetitive movements or sustained awkward positions. While RSI can affect any part of your body that performs repeated actions—such as your shoulders, neck, or back—hand repetitive strain injury is particularly common due to the frequent and precise movements our hands perform daily.
RSI develops gradually as tissues in your hand and wrist become inflamed, strained, or damaged from overuse. Unlike acute injuries that result from a single incident, repetitive stress injury symptoms emerge slowly over weeks or months of repeated motion.
Repetitive strain injuries encompass several specific diagnoses, including tendinitis and trigger finger, all of which can share the common factor of repetitive motion as their primary cause.
Symptoms of RSI in hands
Recognizing repetitive stress injury symptoms in your hands is crucial for early intervention and effective treatment. These symptoms often start mild and gradually intensify if the underlying cause isn’t addressed.
- Pain in the fingers, palm, wrist, or forearm
- Stiffness and reduced flexibility
- Tingling and numbness
- Weakness
- Loss of grip strength
- Swelling and tenderness
- Sensitivity to temperature
Causes and risk factors for repetitive hand strain injury
It can be difficult to know whether an ache or pain in your hand is being caused by repetitive motions, but there are some risk factors that make it more likely that you’re experiencing it:
Job factors
Certain jobs or hobbies can carry a substantial risk of developing repetitive stress injury hand conditions. Office workers who spend hours typing, data entry specialists, assembly line workers, and even musicians are particularly susceptible. Jobs that require sustained gripping, pinching, or static hand positions also elevate risk levels for RSI.
Technology use
Poor ergonomics while using handheld devices or controllers for gaming can contribute to RSI hand development. Using controllers or computer hardware that’s too small for your hands is one way this can happen.
Physical factors
Some people are more prone to repetitive strain hand injuries due to physical characteristics. These include having naturally smaller internal musculature that make nerves more susceptible to compression, previous hand or wrist injuries, or conditions like arthritis that affect overall hand joint health.
Age and gender
While RSI can affect anyone, certain demographics are statistically more likely to develop hand strain injuries. Women are more likely to develop conditions like carpal tunnel syndrome, possibly due to hormonal factors and generally smaller wrist structures. Risk also increases with age as tissues become less resilient to repetitive stress.
Treatment options for RSI
At-home
The cure for injuries caused by repetitive activity is deceptively simple: stop doing whatever’s causing your hand pain. But that’s not always possible, so after reducing the painful activity as much as you can, there are other things to try to find relief at home:
- Rest and activity modification: Reduce the painful activity and try switching up your tasks so the affected hand doesn’t spend too much time doing one repetitive activity.
- Ice and heat therapy: Apply ice to reduce inflammation during acute flare-ups and use heat to help relax tight muscles and improve circulation.
- Over-the-counter pain relief: Anti-inflammatory medications like ibuprofen can help reduce pain and swelling associated with overuse pain.
- Ergonomic improvements: Evaluate your workspace and daily activities for opportunities to reduce hand strain. This might include adjusting your chair height, using a wrist rest while typing, or switching to tools with larger, more comfortable grips.
Sometimes, rest, ice, and ergonomics are not enough to provide the total relief you’re looking for. You may need to learn a better way to do the activity that’s causing your repetitive strain injury. That’s where physical therapy comes in.
Physical therapy
After a thorough evaluation and conversation about your symptoms, our team can help your muscles heal from overuse, strengthen your joints to avoid excessive wear and tear, and provide personalized recommendations that allow you to keep doing what you love or need to do without pain.
Techniques that physical therapy provides that may help with some types of repetitive injuries include:
- Targeted exercise programs: A physical therapy exercise plan is not just designed to increase your grip strength. We’ll develop a personalized plan to strengthen weak muscles, stretch tight tissues, and improve the coordination and endurance of your hand and forearm muscles.
- Manual therapy techniques: Hands-on treatments such as massage, joint mobilization, and soft tissue techniques can help reduce pain, improve circulation, and restore normal tissue mobility.
- Education and training: Perhaps most importantly, physical therapy provides education about proper body mechanics, ergonomics, and activity modification strategies.
- Specialized treatments: We may also utilize specialized treatments that may be available at specific clinics if you’re interested in additional therapies to address specific aspects of your RSI hand condition.
Find relief from repetitive strain injuries at Rehab Access
We know how frustrating it can be when pain interferes with your daily life, and how badly you want your hands to feel normal again. We’re here to help both in the short-term and long-term to allow you to live life fully and with less pain.
Still have questions about what to expect from a physical therapy appointment for your hand? Don’t hesitate to ask your questions to our team. We’re happy to start a conversation with you when you call a Rehab Access clinic near you or request an appointment online today.