1.                    Don’t bang on the keys: Hard keystrokes can cause pain and injury, even if great care taken to achieve correct positioning. Lighten up and drop your curved fingers, almost relaxed fingers into the keyboard.  Key your fingers close to the keys.  All keyboards are sensitive enough to function with a light touch.

2.                  Trim those nail: While first learning long fingernails can be a problem. If the finger tips are flattened out during keyboard use, the whole functional curve of the hand may be lost. Try to keep your nails medium to short and stay up on the soft, rounded finger tip.

3.                              Use your muscles: The key to surviving a long use of the keyboard is to use the big muscle groups of your shoulder and upper back to enable the hands to drop onto the keyboard from the weight of the forearm. Relying exclusively on muscles whose tendons pass through the carpal tunnel may make the hands more prone to pain, especially in the carpel tunnel area. The hands maintain a curved readiness, but the force comes from the force of the larger muscles.

4.                 Take a break: Take regular rest breaks, even before you feel the need for one. At the end of an average eight hour day the fingers may have walked over 17 miles over the keys. There is no substitute for giving your hands a breaks

5.                   Be delicate when typing: Your wrist is very delicate. You must not allow it to twist from side to side, or bounce up and down onto the keys. Let your forearms do most of the work.

6.                   Play the float: Wrists motion requires compression and decompression of the soft tissues, tendons. Median nerve and blood vessels, especially in the carpal tunnel. The hands should “float” over the keys, the wrist should stay fairly straight with the force of the stroke coming from the forearm.

OF MICE and MEN

The mouse should be placed in an easy reach zone so that the shoulders and upper arms can be relaxed and close to the body while operating the mouse. Keep the wrists and hand in a neutral position, never bent. Use as little force as possible when clicking or dragging.

Page Sponsor: Mr. Mark Richter
Author:   Mrs. Beth Schwartz
Created: 17 September 2004
Updated: July, 2009