Ulnar Nerve Entrapment / Cubital Tunnel

[jackarabit]

No joke but don’t choke! Thinking you've been thru worse and will get back up on the horse.

I googled up <ampire> because of your forum handle. A guitar synth. Do you have one?

[ampire]

No joke but don’t choke! Thinking you've been thru worse and will get back up on the horse.

I googled up <ampire> because of your forum handle. A guitar synth. Do you have one?

Nope, I just picked the name arbitrarily. I appreciate your feedback on this. It has been hard to find any rowing specific information about ulnar nerve transposition. I have been having the usual week out from surgery jitters, especially as paradoxically, it hasn't been as bad as it was a month back. It is likely doing better now because I am in a space between semesters and not doing hours of note taking and calculations that I was. In about three weeks I will be back at it for spring semester. Hopefully my right arm is functioning enough for that by then.

[ampire]

I had the surgery on my right arm yesterday, things are going well today. It is already less painful then when it was at its worst.

[jackarabit]

[Timerower]

I had the surgery on my right arm yesterday, things are going well today. It is already less painful then when it was at its worst.

Please keep us updated. I have a similar but less severe injury on dominant left-side elbow, with pain from shoulder to hand, fading in and out.

[AncientMariner]

Ampire, sorry to hear about your nerve issues, but glad things are getting better post op. I was wondering if you might think back and let me know when you first noticed warning signs in your elbow/arm what the first symptoms were and how the symptoms progressed. I have been feeling very slight/mild soreness in my elbows after long rows, and don't want to overlook any potential early warning signs to make corrections. Thanks for sharing, and I wish you a speedy recovery.

[ampire]

Arm is still going great, incision site is sore but the nerve issues are gone and my right arm feels looser and less spasmed. Great improvement. I can tell the contrast between my left arm which needs the surgery but has not had it yet, and my now post operative right arm.

It first started maybe 4 years ago, I had pain in my elbow similar to golf elbow when doing barbell curl and cable low rows, it would come and go. I remember it was really potent a year ago after using a screw driver, I installed a stair railing into studs and the last couple turns of the screw driver was excruciating. With rowing, it wasn't too bad at first but then it started lingering post workout. I was waking up in the morning with numb fingers and extreme pain in my elbows. Then it started affecting my ability to do just about anything, drive a car, cook food, shave my face, sleep at night.

[jackarabit]

[ampire]

So I am now at two weeks, I got the bandage off. The pain is low, my strength in doing household work is decent, I have noticed I lost a good bit of range of motion in flexion of upper arm (example would be a bicep curl motion), It is quite difficult to bring my right palm towards my right shoulder. I am going to work at getting the range of motion back in the arm over the course of this week.

[JaapvanE]

My advice is to take it slow on your recovery: doing too much too quickly often does more harm than good. Don't get lured into the trap that you used to be able to lift certain weights or row a certain time, it takes ages to get back to that point, and it will take longer if you rush. I had to learn that the hard way when recovering from minor surgery a couple of years ago.

[ampire]

I had the left arm done a few days ago. The left arm was an easier recovery than the right, the same procedure, submuscular ulnar nerve transposition. Hopefully will be back on the machine around July. I am not in a rush to do so.

[Dutch]

I had the left arm done a few days ago. The left arm was an easier recovery than the right, the same procedure, submuscular ulnar nerve transposition. Hopefully will be back on the machine around July. I am not in a rush to do so.

Nice to hear from you ampire, glad it went ok for you. Hope you keep making good progress.

[jackarabit]

Good2hear.

[Slidewinder]

My reply to ChrisWilliam in the thread "Rowing with 1 arm", is also apt here.

Being a cyclist, you probably have a collection of bicycle parts. Fit a bicycle handgrip to a piece of steel tubing a bit longer than the length of the grip and with a matching outside diameter. Remove the stock C2 handle. Run a steel cable through the chain swivel connector and through the steel tubing on which the bicycle grip is fitted. Use a couple of cable connectors to fasten the ends of the cable together, forming a loop. There you go.

When your injured arm gets better you could make up a second bicycle grip and fasten the two grip assemblies to the chain swivel connector with cable loops. This configuration will enable you to maintain a bio-mechanically correct alignment of your hands, wrists, and forearms, throughout the stroke. This is what you want - not just for your injured arm, but also for your uninjured arm. A rowing ergometer handle is a human/machine interface. At any such interface the machine should adapt to the natural movement of the user, not the user to the machine, as is the case with the stock, single-piece, rigid handle. Many, many users of the C2 rowing ergometer suffer from chronic wrist pain, sometimes so severe that they can no longer row. The stock handle is a bio-mechanical abomination. That does not prevent forum members from blaming the injured users, claiming that their injuries are a result of poor technique. Technique cannot overcome deficiencies in equipment design.

[Slidewinder]

Are you people never going to wake up? I bought my Model D in 2008. Within two weeks I was in disbelief that users had been uncomplainingly pulling on a rigid stick of a handle since the 1980s. Another 14 years has passed and still no one dares to state the obvious: the handle is the cause of all these injuries! Instead, everyone sings praises to Concept 2 and encourage the injured users to "get back up on the horse" after they have healed, guaranteeing more injury. It's madness. It's a collective derangement.