Forearm Pain Symptoms

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Your Forearm Pain symptoms are almost entirely caused by how you use your hands and arms now, and how you have used them in the past. Symptoms can also be caused by previous injury to your forearms as well.

Movements, habits, and injuries all create patterns of strain that are completely unique to you and your body. Your case of Forearm Pain will be different in many ways from any other case of Forearm Pain because of the tissue history you carry with you all the time.

True Forearm Pain symptoms will be primarily muscular. Forearm symptoms almost always include grabbing, aching, weakness, and/or possibly throbbing. You might even get some stabbing pain if you are straining your forearm muscles to their limit. (Stop that!)

The forearms rely on the coordinated movements that happen between the flexor muscles which are on the palm side of the forearm and the extensor muscles which are on the the back-of-the-hand side of the forearms.

In many cases of Forearm Pain, the muscles on one side of the forearms get overworked and begin to glue themselves together to support one another through the strain.

This "gluing together" is known as "adhesions". Adhesions are the main source of forearm pain problems. When side-by-side muscles become stuck together, or adhered, they begin to act like one big muscle rather than smaller, more action-specific muscles.

Here's an example. Let's say that you always carry a heavy briefcase in your right hand. The gripping causes the muscles on the palm side of your forearm to become overworked. So, they attempt to spread out their efforts by sticking themselves together and acting as a group.

After the adhesions have formed, you cannot push down with your index finger and expect the tiny index finger muscles alone to do all the work as they were designed. Instead, the whole stuck-together mass of muscle has to be dragged into action by the tiny index finger muscle. This leads to extreme fatigue and the chance for more serious injury.

Adhesions also prevent muscles from relaxing and lengthening fully. They are in a constant state of contraction to one degree or another. Result? Very tired and overworked muscles.

Steve - The Weekend Painter

Let's follow the story of a guy who has typical Forearm Pain Symptoms. We'll call him Steve.

Steve works during the week as a computer programmer. For the past several weekends, Steve has been working hard to paint the exterior of his family's home.

Steve is really, really motivated to get this big house painting job done. He has been pushing it to fit as much painting as he can into each weekend. Shortly after he began the job, he started having deep aching and weakness in the back of his hand and into his forearm muscles. But he shook it off, kept on painting, ignoring the pain.

During the week, Steve works hard on the computer, pounding away at the keys for hours each day. He doesn't realize it but a serious injury is brewing under his skin. Here is what is happening.

When Steve began pushing his body to paint for much longer than he was used to, he began building up incredible strain in his forearm muscles, particularly the muscles on the back-of-the-hand side of his forearms (the extensor muscles).

Steve had clues. He developed the aching and weakness almost immediately, probably because his body was not used to being worked in this particular way. He ignored the pain and kept painting. His brain started to help him out.

What? His brain? Yep. His brain. The human brain has a pretty neat trick built in to help all of us who are foolish enough to ignore warning signs from our bodies. That is, the brain starts to numb out on feelings of pain when they are ignored long enough.

Now, don't get me wrong. The damage continues to build. You just don't feel it anymore. So, our intrepid painter Steve thought his arms just got used to all the strain from the painting. WRONG! He just couldn't feel it. Trouble was brewing.

So, Steve shows up at work on a Monday, ready to begin pounding the keys for another five days straight. His work requires him to use his flexor muscles (palm side) to press on the computer keys. But, because he spent the weekend causing his extensor muscles (back-of-the-hand side) to experience strain, leading them to form adhesions to support each other through the effort, his extensor muscles cannot let go and lengthen like they normally should.

Instead, Steve's forearm flexor muscles have to do ten times the normal work by pulling against the tension of the extensor muscles with each press of the computer keys. This takes enormous effort and it isn't long before the tiny flexor muscles that he relies on for his work are completely overwhelmed, exhausted and screaming in pain.

Steve finally realizes that he has a BIG problem. The only problem is, Steve thinks the problem is related to his work, when actually it was caused by the overwork of his extensor muscles on the weekends.

So, where did Steve go wrong? Several places, actually.

First, Steve ignored the signs and signals from his body that he was overusing his muscles.

Second, Steve took on a painting task that his body was definitely not in condition for. He didn't realize that you have to train muscles to work that hard, just as an athlete would. Steve just jumped right into the job without a minute of body conditioning. Not a good idea as we can now see. Now his job is in jeopardy, he is in pain and doesn't know where to look for help (until he finds this website, of course!).

So, what does this mean for you as you learn about Forearm Pain Symptoms? Let me summarize this way.

1. Forearm Pain Symptoms can happen anywhere on the forearms.

2. Symptoms are closely related to the coordinated movements of the flexor and extensor muscles. When one group gets overworked, strain develops which you may or may not feel in that muscle group. Since the normal coordination between the two groups of muscles is disturbed, pain will result. It's only a matter of time.

Check out the Forearm Pain Self Care section for tips on how to help yourself if Forearm Pain is your constant companion. I'm happy to help. Here's the link.

Forearm Pain Self Care Would you like professional help with your Forearm Pain Symptoms? Try my Forearm Pain Self Care Program which I developed to help relieve the pain, aching, weakness and stiffness of the forearms. Here's the link.

Forearm Pain Self Care Program

To learn about another repetitive strain injury, return to the Home Page.