{"id":102,"date":"2005-01-13T20:17:36","date_gmt":"2005-01-14T04:17:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=102"},"modified":"2005-01-13T20:17:36","modified_gmt":"2005-01-14T04:17:36","slug":"mr-magic-fixes-hand-injuries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/mr-magic-fixes-hand-injuries\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Magic fixes hand injuries"},"content":{"rendered":"

I injured my thumb in September and kept playing with the injury until the end of league<\/a> play in October. Dumb, I know. I stopped playing tennis as soon as league finished. I visited my physical therapist weekly. I started taking a glucosamine supplement and using arnica cream to keep the swelling down. My thumb improved slowly but surely. Too slowly. So I put it in a splint for five weeks. After five weeks it was better but I still couldn’t play tennis and now my thumb clicked terribly whenever I tried to bend it.<\/p>\n

Finally I remembered to go and see my trainer, Lenny Parracino<\/a>. He’s certified in Active Release Technique<\/a>. If you have a joint injury, you have injury to the connective tissue around the joint. If you’re lucky and the joint is not injured, then only the connective tissue is injured. Either way, it’s important to get work done directly to the connective tissue if you want your digit to heal any time soon. I’m not going to lie to you, it does hurt. But it’s worth it. After two visits my thumb felt much better. After three weeks I am on the tennis courts again. Every day I stretch my thumb, squeeze Theraputty<\/a> in my hand and strengthen my fingers with a Power Web<\/a>. I’ll keep doing this until the pain completely disappears.<\/p>\n

By the way, nobody is paying me to publish these links though I wish they would. It’s very expensive to go to a physical therapist and a trainer and then buy all of these rehabilitative thingies. I have a closet full of weights, straps, calf stretchers and yoga props. If I wanted to open a dungeon, I’d be well equipped.<\/p>\n

After talking with Lenny, I now think that it was a mistake to wear a splint. The splint reduced the pain only because I wasn’t using my thumb. My connective tissue seemed to be worse – I developed trigger finger – and I lost muscle tone and flexibility in my hand. I think it’s a better idea to use your injured part as much as possible making sure that you heed pain. If something hurts, stop doing what you’re doing.<\/p>\n

When you get Active Release work, be sure to see someone who will spend some time working with you. Don’t settle for a ten-minute turn with a body worker who is trying to maximize profit by getting people in and out of the door as quickly as possible. It does happen, you know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I injured my thumb in September and kept playing with the injury until the end of league play in October. Dumb, I know. I stopped playing tennis as soon as league finished. I visited my physical therapist weekly. I started taking a glucosamine supplement and using arnica cream to keep the swelling down. My thumb […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-injuries","category-tennis-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}