Any other guys suffer from trigger finger. Its When your finger catches in the knuckle and doesn't open good. I'm a old construction worker. I love shooting my longbow but can't shoot much or finger gets bad. Any ideas other than surgery to help.
I have the same problem. Middle & ring finger. Middle finger actually locks up and I have grab it and straighten it out. I'm sure its from years of shooting the bow. I will wrap my hand in a heating pad, use topical creams and massage. Helps a bit. Good luck!
I had the surgery. Bow hand though. It is not a bad surgery with a short recovery time. My daughter is a hand therapist (OT) and works for a good hand surgeon. So was confident in the doctor. He tried cortisone shot before surgery, but that didn't work.
Yes. Sometimes while driving long distances (3D shoots) my fingers will start to lockup and I have to pull them open. My right trigger finger will do that at times.
I used to get hand and finger cramps. I turned a screwdriver for 35+ years. Since I have been having a handful of Walnuts each morning I haven’t had the problem. Now don’t get me wrong I am not a big believer in “witch doctor” remedies but this works for me. This was a tip I learned right here some months back.
Arthritis, likely, though not doctor. I had similar issue but after being put on blood pressure medicine and eating few bananas issue went away. One other thing that helped is getting more of a deeper hook, which takes strain off tendon and gives cleaner release.
Yeah...Me too. Had to quit shooting for awhile. Got better but still tightens up some. Like Todd said ..deeper hook helps but...never completely goes away.
Just yesterday I got lock hands where all my fingers would suddenly fold uptight with a locked grip where I Literally had to pry it open and it rolled over quickly and I thought it just had to do with fatigue from holding a screw gun and using most of day . Then I also had a severed right hand and had all my mid palm area cut completely off and was “Blessed “. To have my hand reattached but a little shorter in 1985 .I was loading a log in a log splitter and my brother in law hit the lever just as I was laying the log n the splitter and next Thing I knew I was pumping blood like a busted water pipe and 2 hours later I arrived to a Hand center. I can shoot with it still but have a hang up every now and again and ring finger hangs up on string . Here’s my X-ray from 12-1-1985
I had a prolonged case of trigger finger in my middle finger a few years ago. Any time that I closed my hand fully, the finger would lock up. I had to grab it and pull it because there was not enough strength in the finger to lift off of the palm. I had a dog misbehave one afternoon and hauled off and slapped it on the rump really hard. That finger popped and hurt like the dickens for a few minutes. It has not locked up since. I started taking Tumeric Curcumin every day and eating walnuts every other day or so. It took several months to heal up but is fine now.
My trigger finger is messed up and I can't bend it, it just remains straight. Couldn't shoot at all for a month or two after the incident/surgery. Tried a Talon wrist tab, but can't use that without my index finger either. Put up a post, some folks suggested a mechanical release, some said you can shoot two under. Tried that; it felt awkward the first time or two, but got a few simple tips on it and within a few days I was shooting as well as before. Been a few weeks now and it feels very natural. Middle and ring finger under, strong deep hook... works fine. Trigger finger just lightly touches the arrow.
Middle finger on my draw hand would lock up and pop open upon release. It also happened whenever I made a fist. The like to the video below of stretching nd massage worked really well for my case. I'd do the rubber band stretch as much as possible throughout the day. Took me about 2 weeks of doing the exercises every day to recover. Never came back.
FWIW many electricians I know, as well as others who use their hands a lot (I was a locksmith in a prior life), have avoided surgery and report great success doing hand exercises in the extensor motion using a 'cats paw'.
The 'Cats Paw' is a piece of stretchable rubber with holes in it, something like you see on a bowling ball and you put your fingers in and spread them wide to stretch them out and hold it. You can even try it with an elastic band looped around the tips of your fingers.
In use, we all use the flexor motion to grip things 10 to 1 over the extensor motion and over time, our hands and the tendons become unbalanced, never mind what it does to the sheath tunnels in the wrist, i.e., carpal tunnel.
There are no muscles in the hands, all tendons and one tendon starts at the 2nd joint in the ring finger and connects all the way down at the base of the forearm by the bony ridge/bump the medial epicondyle. BTW, the ring finger provides the strongest grip in the hand.
Try some easy stretches with an elastic band looped around the tips of your fingers ... that's what I still do to this day if I get the dreaded 'finger lock'. I lent out my 'cats paw' and never got it back ... grrrrrrr.
