This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Using the Elliptical Trainer, is published on this website in a PDF format. It is very detailed and practical, and it will give you the physical tools you need to take the limits off of your ability to create an effortless elliptical technique.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
When I was practicing six hours a day, seven days a week, to become a concert guitarist at the Royal College of Music in London in the early seventies, I developed carpal tunnel syndrome in my left wrist. I went to an Alexander Technique teacher, and within few months I was able to practice as much as I wanted without pain, and I’ve never suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome since.
What was it that the Alexander Technique teacher taught me that got me out of physical trouble permanently? I was taught how to press the strings with the minimum strength necessary, to find the most mechanically advantageous hand position in relationship to the string and guitar neck, and to press the strings without immobilizing my wrist, elbow, and shoulder.
I’ve applied the above principles in my ebook on using an elliptical machine. If the hands are in a mechanically advantageous relationship to the handles, and you hold the handles with a released dynamic wrists and grip, then you will be on your way to healing your carpal tunnel syndrome.
When using an elliptical trainer, you want to support your wrists with easy decompressed forearms, upper arms, and shoulders. Then you can hold the handles with arms, hands, and fingers, supported by released shoulders, that are not hurting from squeezing the handles. Then, when you ride, with fingers that lengthen around the handles, you aren’t damaging the bones of the wrist and causing carpal tunnel syndrome.
Let me explain. If you’ve learned to hold/squeeze the handles with a static held body and arm positions, then as you continuously change the relationship of the hands to the forearms with held immobilized tension, you’re forcing the bones of the wrist to grind against each other.
Simply, tense muscles force bones together and cause 100% unnecessary wear and tear throughout the whole body.
Why do elliptical machine users use too much muscle to ride? It is to get the most conditioning benefit out of the trainer. But this is confusing excess tension for movement, for getting the best conditioning out of the trainer. So, when you use an elliptical machine a lot squeezing the handles, you are damaging your body.
Then, you seek out an Alexander Technique teacher who shows you that you can ride with ease and control, if you release all of your excess tension, use balanced posture, and trust your hands and fingers wrapped/lengthening around the handle bars to get exercise from the movement of the handles.
I want to say something here about injuries being inevitable in repetitive activities. They are not, but by the time an elliptical user comes to an Alexander Technique teacher with carpal tunnel syndrome, the elliptical user has lived with a powerful belief system that says injuries are inevitable in just about all activities done a lot.
I show elliptical trainer users how to get out of physical trouble, and I also ask them to simultaneously question all of the negative beliefs they have about the trainer causing harm to the body. I then ask them to consider giving up all of the beliefs that guarantee they will eventually get injured from the trainer.
I was trying to look up to see about people who work the arms really hard. I have been doing this but just had to get my 2nd cortisone injection for carpal tunnel. The dr. says I should get the operation next time. It is not JUST the elliptical, I was watering all the plants around the house with those hose add-ons that you use like a gun.
I did build up a lot of arm muscle doing this so, in that sense, it worked, but . . .
I could feel the CPS acting up: numbness, pins & needles. I guess I should have stopped doing what I was doing. We are now putting in a drip system & when I do the elliptical, I try to use my 3 smaller fingers more, and put very little pressure on the thumb & forefinger.
Has anyone else had this problem?
I hear about this problem all of time. Almost everyone who does a lot of arm exercising confuses doing the exercise with tension. What I mean is he or she tenses the arms in preparation for exercise. This means they immobilize the arms before doing the exercise, which compresses all of the joints. The wear and tear to the joints isn’t caused by the exercise, the movements, but by the excess tension in the arms that force the bones together during the activity.
It feels like you’re getting more out of an exercise when you do it with tension, but this is an illusion. Experiment with how free your arms and hands and wrists can be as you hold the elliptical machine handles without squeezing the handles and locking your elbows and shoulders before and as you use the trainer.