How I Fixed My RSI from Typing: The Three Things That Stopped the Arm Pain

For about two years, my right arm hurt.

It started as a low, dull ache on the outside of my forearm — the kind you can ignore for a week, then another week, then another. By month three it was a sharp twinge every time I reached for the mouse. By month six I couldn't hold a full coffee cup without bracing my elbow a specific way.

I did what most people do: I googled it, self-diagnosed RSI, bought a gel wrist rest, and kept working.

The wrist rest didn't help.

What it actually felt like (if you're trying to self-diagnose)

For me it was a mix of things that came and went depending on the day:

• A deep, bone-level ache in the outer forearm, worst around the elbow joint
• Stiffness first thing in the morning — my right hand felt foreign for the first ten minutes of the day
• Sharp pain when I did certain specific things: lifting a pan, turning a screwdriver, shaking someone's hand firmly
• Vague numbness in my ring and pinky fingers at the end of a long work day, fading after a few hours away from the keyboard

None of this was dramatic enough on any single day to send me to a doctor. It was dramatic enough in aggregate, over two years, to become the thing I thought about every time I sat down at my desk.

One disclaimer before the rest: if any of the above sounds familiar, get it checked out by an actual physiotherapist or occupational therapist. What worked for me might not map to what you've got, and nerve pain in particular is the kind of thing you want a professional to look at before it becomes structural. That said — here's what actually moved the needle for me.

Thing 1: I booked a video call with an ergonomics expert

The first thing I did was book a Zoom call with a physiotherapist who specializes in workplace ergonomics. I pointed my laptop camera at my desk from a couple of angles, she had me work normally for a few minutes while she watched, and then she listed, very calmly, everything that was wrong:

• My screen was too low, which made me hunch forward to read small text
• My chair was too high, which meant my forearms sloped down to the keyboard instead of sitting flat
• My mouse was too far to the right of the keyboard, which forced my right shoulder forward every time I reached for it
• I was resting my forearms on the hard edge of the desk — putting constant pressure on the exact nerve that was hurting
• I had no foot rest, so my legs were floating, which was why my lower back also hurt (something I'd just been accepting as "getting older")

She walked me through adjusting everything in under ten minutes and showed me how to set up any new desk I sat at in the future. The difference was immediate. Not "I felt better in a week" — I felt better that afternoon, after thirty minutes of working in the new setup. The deep ache didn't vanish, but it stopped getting worse, and by the end of the first week it was noticeably better.

Thing 2: I got regular massages

Once a month, sometimes twice in a bad month, I got a targeted massage on my forearms, shoulders, and upper back. Not a spa massage — a sports-ish massage from a therapist who knew the specific muscle groups and could find the trigger points.

I want to be honest about what massages did and didn't do:

1. They gave me temporary relief, which made the recovery period much more bearable. When you've been hurting for months, even a single day of feeling "normal" is worth the cost.
2. They taught me where the actual problems were. Every session revealed knots and trigger points I didn't know I had. I'd come out of one thinking huh, I had no idea my upper trapezius was carrying all that. Over time that turned into a map of which muscles I needed to actively stretch between massages.

Massages did not cure my RSI. Nothing in isolation did. But they kept me in the game while the ergonomics and the break habit did the slower work of actually fixing the underlying problem. I still get one every four to six weeks. At this point it's maintenance, not treatment.

Thing 3: I started taking real breaks — and this is the one I couldn't fix with willpower

Here's where it gets interesting, because this is the change that made the first two stick.

Ergonomics give you a better posture at any single moment. Massages give you relief. But both of those are undone if you sit at the same desk for six uninterrupted hours, which was more or less what my workday actually looked like. I'd sit down at 9am, look up again at 1pm, realize I was starving, eat at my desk, and not stand up again until 6.

I already knew I needed to take breaks. Everyone knows. The problem isn't knowing — the problem is remembering in the middle of deep work, every single day, for weeks and months. I tried all the obvious things:

• Phone alarms: I muted them after three days because they fired in the middle of meetings and focused calls.
• Sticky notes on the monitor: I stopped seeing them after about a week.
• Apple Watch stand reminders: Great at reminding me to stand for sixty seconds every hour, useless at making me actually stretch or walk.
• Kitchen timer: Worked for a week until I forgot to wind it, then never started again.

Eventually I wrote Standup. I wrote it because nothing else I'd tried made me take a break I hadn't consciously planned. The thing that finally worked was a tool that knew when I was actually working, sat quietly during meetings, and when the break hit, took over my whole screen in a way I couldn't dismiss with a flick of the mouse. It's the tool I wish I'd had two years earlier, when the outer forearm ache first started.

Where I'm at now

The right-arm pain is mostly gone. I get a small twinge maybe once a month, usually after a day at a borrowed desk or a hotel room with a bad chair. It goes away overnight.

If you're where I was two years ago, the three things that worked are not a secret. They're just a little boring and they require patience.

Start with the ergonomics consultation — it's cheap, it's one-and-done, and you'll feel a difference the same day. Get regular massages if you can; they won't fix the problem but they'll keep you comfortable while the real fix is happening. And get serious about taking real breaks — this is the one that actually broke the cycle for me. Whatever tool you pick, the key is that it has to know when you're actually working and it has to be impossible to ignore without standing up.

And if your eyes are also taking a beating after a long day at the screen, I wrote about the 20-20-20 rule and why it usually doesn't stick separately. Same underlying problem — humans are bad at interrupting themselves — just a different body part paying the price.

Your arm will thank you.