I knew that it was a bit sore but to what extent I wasn’t really sure.

The entire night I was tossing and turning with an excruciating pain in my left thumb joint. It was like someone took a knife and was constantly jabbing it. It was on fire.

I knew then that I had done something to it.

I quickly ran some self-diagnosis to test the flexibility and to better gauge the severity of the issue. I wanted to test my wrist by varying the movement to see whether I did any harm to the wrist and possible forearm or was it just isolated to the hand itself.

I did varied movements, by using angular motion, to extend, flex, pronate, supinate and rotate the wrist and forearm. There was no pain or limited motion, so I felt somewhat comfortable that the pain was possibly related to just the left hand.

In addition, I matched both my left hand and right hand palm to palm and spread and pronated inward and outward my thumb to see if there were any noticeable differences between either hand. As I did not see anything out of the norm. I ask for a second opinion and recruited my girlfriend to see if she saw anything different between my left and right hand. Again nothing seemed unusual.

With a relatively confident self-diagnosis, I began to take rice (R.I.C.E.) no not the brown or white type you eat, I used a good old treatment to help with what I believed was a mild injury often recommended for soft-tissue injuries.

R.I.C.E. is an acronym and nice way of remembering the four elements that make it up: Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevate.

Rest

When any type of trauma or injury happens, it is essential that you take time off from using the affected limb, until you have 80-90% of your functionality.One of the biggest mistakes, and I have been guilty of this one as well, is coming back too soon from an injury or worse ignoring your body’s message of pain and continuing to workout. This often leads to even worse injuries that oftentimes require someone with a scalpel cut one open or sewing one up. In my research I have seen that  the vast majority of serious injuries could have been prevented if the person just took some well needed time off. Recovery from muscle tears, soreness and injury is far different than tendon injuries that need at minimum 2-6 weeks to heal. Muscles and tendons both require time to heal from trauma.

What I personally did with my left hand, was to take a few days off to just monitor the injury. After 3 days i noticed that the pain was subsiding but was still noticeable. Wrists, shoulders and hands can be particularly prone to injury and taking proper care is essential especially when it comes to calisthenics. So I decided to take 2 weeks off and monitor it, as well, I tried to do as little as possible with my left hand as possible, to not aggravate it any more.

Ice

This second element, is a bit, controversial, because there are two schools of thoughts when it comes to icing injuries, do it or don’t do it. I have heard both arguments and quite honestly, I can only go with my own personal experience, which is when I ice an injury for 10-15 minutes, the swelling and pain subsides. Now of course this could be a placebo, but what the heck, if it works, why fix it?

Whether the inflammation is reduced or not, is again up for debate, but I subscribe to icing the injury at least 10-15 minutes every hour on the hour. You don’t want to do more than 15 minutes because you could actually work against you in delaying healing. It’s best to use some form of insulation like a towel to protect your skin from the ice cold pack. Another suggestion is to alternate between ice and no-ice for 15–20 minutes each, for a 24–48 hour period.

Compression

I want to preface that all four elements, Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevate are all design to help reduce inflammation and allow your body to naturally heal itself. This third element, compression, helps to reduce and sometimes limit the swelling, however it can also delay healing. But it’s been my experience that the compression from a ace bandage or elastic cloth bandage greatly helps to not only reduce the swelling but also the pain. You don’t want to have it too tight, just tight enough to apply pressure. If you feel throbbing than you may have it wrapped to tightly and will want to re-apply the bandage. Compression stockings or sleeves are a viable options. Anything that can act as a subtle applied force of pressure.

Elevation

This final element or component is simply meant to elevate the injured area higher than the level of your heart. The purpose is to again reduce inflammation, by raising the injured area above your heart. Essentially you are using gravity to help and aid your lymph system to reduce the swelling. You are in essence helping your body to relieve itself of the blood that can cause swelling. by increasing venous return of blood to the systemic circulation. In other words, when you raise your injured area higher than heart, you help to redirect the blood flow by good old fashion gravity, because the flow is being forced back to the source, which is your heart.

These four elements can make a huge difference in your ability to heal. I have personally used these four with positive results. Of course, this is just anecdotal evidence, as one person’s experience does not make for scientific proof.

However, with the exception of “compression” where you may need to buy an ACE bandage, and even then you can improvise with a bandana or torn piece of cloth, or a sock or something that is elastic enough to create a force of pressure, the other three elements are completely FREE.

My question to you, is if you are going to experience or are experiencing a soft tissue injury, why wouldn’t you give it a try?