Radial tunnel syndrome

Tom, I don't know this syndrome, at least by its name, but I would think your doctor would best know what you should or should not be doing as far as swimming goes. Or, if you have a coach, he/she may have some valuable input. However, having said that, if an injury of any kind requires cortizone injections, they can be magical to a point. I am sorry I am of no help on this one, I haven't heard this medical term before. Did your doctor say it was a swimming injury? Is it an overuse injury? Something else? donna

ljodpundari;87408] My left arm has been bothering me since January, and the orthopaedist finally narrowed it down to radial tunnel (as opposed to tennis elbow, etc.). I got a cortisone shot last Monday, and actually started swimming a bit this week (rather than just kick sets). I'm still doing the stretches and exercises the therapist gave me back when we thought it was tennis elbow (can't type lateral epicondylitis very well:rolleyes: ) Any other ideas about how to help this along? Here's a good article about this condition: www.handuniversity.com/topics.asp What about stroke mechanics? Are there particular things I should watch out for? I'm just doing *** and free right now, though I want to get back to butterfly eventually. I just don't want to mess things up worse than they are already. One of the causes for Radial Tunnel Syndrome is excessive bending of the wrist backwards, however none of your strokes involves this possible action (FR, BR and FL). I could see it happening in BK where some people could bend the wrist back, excessively -thinking they are "reaching"- upon entry (and these people will usually cross their body's long axis). Are you left-handed? Do you use your mouse with the left hand and do not support your whole forearm when using the mouse (i.e., only the base of your palm is on the desk/mousepad and your whole arm is straight-ish from wrist to shoulder)? I had a similar situation (but I'm righ-handed) and found that adding an L-shaped extension to my desk surface to support my whole right forearm helped (along with regular application of Heat Ointment, BenGay, A535, etc...) Good Luck and hope it gets better.

islandsox;87445] However, having said that, if an injury of any kind requires cortizone injections, they can be magical to a point. donna Just a note of caution about cortisone injections; they do relieve the pain (i.e., mask the symptoms) but do not cure the cause. I did get a cortisone injection when I had injured three of my four rotator cuff muscles (cause unknown); the pain did almost vanish but for the following few days I had to be very aware that I was injured and very careful not to aggravate the injury by doing any contra-indicated movement, which the absence of pain might let my body think I could get away with doing.

The puzzling thing is, I'm right-handed. Most of what I've read about this says that it's usually due to some sort of rotation (I guess your backstroke example might come under that heading). But I almost always do things like that with my right hand. I'm very careful with backstroke because it seems to stress my shoulders if I get sloppy. Right now I start getting a minor ache in my forearm if I try swimming more than about 100m, so I take that as a signal to go back to kicking for a while. Thanks for the feedback. The Hand University link is a good one. My orthopaedist recommended it to me back when we were trying to figure out what my problem really was. I think I'm lucky to have a doc who believes in keeping patients informed.