Author Topic: Arm updates  (Read 56675 times)

foxgamer01

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Reply #45 on: July 15, 2015, 07:25:53 PM
I did asked about my dad about your arms and, well, he thinks that he knows what's wrong with your arms. Especially when he learns about how OCD you are, especially when it comes to drawing. He suggests that it's some form of repetitive motion injury. More info here. http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/repetitive-motion-injuries

Tell me what you think. ^.|.^;;

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Virmir

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Reply #46 on: July 15, 2015, 10:26:45 PM
Yep!  Golfer's elbow, which is the strongest candidate for what I think I have (in the right arm at least) and tendinitis in general are types of repetitive strain injuries.

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foxgamer01

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Reply #47 on: July 16, 2015, 06:05:48 PM
Yup. Though there are therapy that can help you heal faster if that's the case, which is to use your arms for exercise that don't require drawing or anything like that. It's because, since the arms are injured from being used the same thing over and over again for a long time, doing something different with your arms after doing some drawing will make it much easier to rest, since it's breaking up the monotonous schedule you put your arms into. It's what athletes do after a game or practice. Heck, it's what the British longbowmen do too (one even learn how to juggle).

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Virmir

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Reply #48 on: July 16, 2015, 09:07:31 PM
I actually did about three months of official physical therapy and then I've been doing exercises on my own for about six months now (after taking a few month break and then evaluating which exercises bother the arms and which ones are okay to do).  Stretching is indeed important and is something I will continue to do even after the arms heal!

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Virmir

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Reply #49 on: August 01, 2015, 12:14:08 AM
This month's arm annoyance factors below! Again, keep in mind the right arm is nearly constantly at rest in the left arm in use. (Standard deviations in parentheses.)

Code: [Select]
L R
February 3.1 (1.4) 4.1 (1.8)
March 2.4 (0.9) 3.2 (1.3)
April 2.3 (0.9) 2.9 (1.0)
May 2.4 (0.9) 2.3 (0.9)
June 1.6 (0.6) 2.2 (0.8)
July  1.8 (0.9) 1.5 (0.7)

Right arm--noticeably better compared to June!  Part of the reason for the improvement is because I have sort of run out of new exercises to try experimentally (to see if they bother it or not--sometimes they do and then obviously I stop but it still messes up the numbers a bit) and have thus settled into a routine of knowing how to not bother it, but still having it feel better at rest as much as it has lately is a new thing!  I will be adding 1/2 hour to each drawing session this month, bringing the total number of right handed drawing hours per week to 3.5.

Left arm--the left arm was a little rougher this month, but not so bad.  I don't believe drawing is the source of agitation but rather other daily tasks and somehow how I was resting the arm at the computer (which I've since corrected and have seen some improvement).  I'm going to add 1 hour to each of the week day drawing sessions (which will be focused on CF pages) and 30 minutes to the Sunday session (since I don't want to go overboard just yet)

Extra Complex Fun Allotment Schedule:

Sunday - L 3.5h
Monday - R 1h
Tuesday - L 2h
Wednesday - (odd day)
Thursday - R 1h
Friday - L 2h
Saturday - R 1.5h

Total weekly drawing hours for August: 11

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Nixuelle

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Reply #50 on: August 01, 2015, 10:09:58 PM
« Last Edit: September 06, 2015, 08:47:09 AM by BlueDragon62 »



Virmir

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Reply #51 on: August 31, 2015, 11:57:11 PM
This month's arm annoyance factors below! Again, keep in mind the right arm is nearly constantly at rest in the left arm in use. (Standard deviations in parentheses.)

Code: [Select]
L R
February 3.1 (1.4) 4.1 (1.8)
March 2.4 (0.9) 3.2 (1.3)
April 2.3 (0.9) 2.9 (1.0)
May 2.4 (0.9) 2.3 (0.9)
June 1.6 (0.6) 2.2 (0.8)
July  1.8 (0.9) 1.5 (0.7)
August 1.2 (0.6) 1.4 (0.7)

Right arm--slightly better and overall doing well so long as it gets rest.  Sometimes the 90 minute sessions give it a bit of trouble, so I'm not going to change anything for September.

Left arm--significant improvement this month.  I no longer see a need to monitor drawing sessions as closely as I've been with the left arm.  Therefore, for September I'm going to try not worrying about timing sessions and simply draw as long as it feels fine three days per week, plus I am going to add a short session on Wednesday.  I will still keep the right handed drawing days as a break for the left hand for now.  This actually won't be as huge of a jump as it sounds. As people have seen, the 3 1/2 hour Sunday session really drags on to 6+ hours since I stop the timer for every little break and pause, so it ends up taking a pretty decent chunk of the day.  And the 2 hour CF sessions during weekdays are pretty close to how much time I would invest on the comic normally after working for 8 hours anyway.

For the past month I've been able to complete one Crimson Flag page per week using the Monday through Saturday sessions, leaving the Sunday session for drawing other things.  At this rate if there are no further setbacks, CF is looking to get back on track mid-October once the buffer reaches 10 pages.  Starting this Saturday, CF will move up to an update every other week until this point is reached.

That would be RECOVERY MILESTONE NUMBER ONE, which I've been working towards since December.

This month with the extra left-handed drawing time I will be working towards completing CF pages Monday through Friday and opening up that Saturday session for other things.  I want to do the Halloween sketch-a-thon in October, so if I can open up some right handed drawing time for that, that would be great (although not entirely necessary).  We'll see how it goes!

Extra Complex Fun Allotment Schedule:

Sunday - L (unmonitored)
Monday - R 1h
Tuesday - L (unmonitored)
Wednesday - L 30-60 min
Thursday - R 1h
Friday - L (unmonitored)
Saturday - R 1.5h

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Nixuelle

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Reply #52 on: September 07, 2015, 05:36:07 AM



Virmir

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Reply #53 on: September 30, 2015, 11:22:12 PM
This month's arm annoyance factors below! Again, keep in mind the right arm is nearly constantly at rest in the left arm in use. (Standard deviations in parentheses.)

Code: [Select]
L R
February 3.1 (1.4) 4.1 (1.8)
March 2.4 (0.9) 3.2 (1.3)
April 2.3 (0.9) 2.9 (1.0)
May 2.4 (0.9) 2.3 (0.9)
June 1.6 (0.6) 2.2 (0.8)
July  1.8 (0.9) 1.5 (0.7)
August 1.2 (0.6) 1.4 (0.7)
September 1.8 (0.8) 1.2 (0.6)

Right arm--some slight improvement again this month.  That 1.0 barrier is going to be hard to pass because in order for me to assign 0 to a day it has to feel perfect.  (1 is negligible, 2 is noticeable but not too bad, 3 and up are the ouch levels) Although if it stays around 1 when I start using it that would be no problem at all.  (We're still not there yet--usage still causes irritation.) I'm still a bit hesitant to pass the 90 minute barrier so for October I will be bumping up the two 60 minute sessions to 90 minutes.

Also notable, the right arm does significantly better sketching and inking than with other steps of the drawing process.  This is likely due to slower movements and not having to constantly select tools from menus during these steps.  This will be something to focus on once it's ready to try longer sessions.  We also should be good to go for the first right handed streams in a long time for this month's Halloween sketches.

Left arm--Oops!  Had a bit of a setback this month.  For the past several months I've been trying to pinpoint things that irritate it and make adjustments, particularly when working four days per week.  I've made significant progress and thus have been able to increase the amount of drawing time with this arm, however it seems that this month mouse movement combined with increased drawing time caused a problem.  The solution--cut out the mouse, of course!  I've started using a small trackball that I can control with the thumb that has helped a lot, except I can only use it a couple hours per day before it starts giving my thumb problems and we don't want that, so it is mainly a light usage/after work thing.  I'm currently looking into some other trackballs and track pads as ways to add variety to the way I control the cursor.  In the meantime, the drawing gets scaled back a bit to make sure the arm does not get too irritated again.

At this point it's fairly obvious there is no way the left arm is going to get better while I'm using it in place of the right arm.  That's okay so long as the right arm continues to improve.  I'm just going to worry about keeping it at manageable levels, have fun and draw when it feels okay (on designated left-handed days), and relax when it needs rest.

I had originally thought that Crimson Flag would return to its weekly schedule once I completed building the 10 page buffer this month, however this jump is getting pushed back since I had to take a one week break.  In addition to having a large buffer, the other half of the exercise was to make sure I could draw one page per week many weeks in a row before dedicating myself to this schedule once again.  So, this counter gets reset!  That's okay--I didn't quite expect to ramp up to this speed on the first try.  I'm probably going to want to do at least eight or so pages in a row with no problem before I decide to return to a once per week schedule officially.  The every other week schedule is a good place to be in for now since a comic at half speed is super easy to do and I don't feel miserable with the comic not updating at all.  Plus this month I'm going to dedicate the Saturday and Sunday sessions for Halloween sketches and not worry about if I don't have the comic for the week done beforehand.

Extra Complex Fun Allotment Schedule:

Sunday - L unmonitored, as long as it feels okay
Monday - R 1.5h
Tuesday - L 2h (max)
Wednesday - odd day (draw with mouth instead)
Thursday - R 1.5h
Friday - L 2h (max)
Saturday - R 1.5h

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Fragmaster01

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Reply #54 on: October 01, 2015, 12:13:51 AM
How much does your mouth hurt from using it to draw? :P



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Reply #55 on: October 01, 2015, 09:20:26 AM
So we have a dedicated drawing with the mouth day finally

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Virmir

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Reply #56 on: October 01, 2015, 10:57:00 PM
Actually I've been drawing with the mouth a little almost every day. [;)

Mouth feels fine!  Neck is a little sore though.

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Reply #57 on: October 01, 2015, 11:13:38 PM
I could see you doing like a talent performance at a con with that.
"Watch this goober draw with his mouth! Give money to charity! Make stupid pony jokes!"

Any doctor updates? Or are they doing the classic "Yep, sounds good, come back in a few weeks to pay me more."?



Virmir

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Reply #58 on: October 02, 2015, 09:15:57 PM
I haven't seen a doctor about this since last December, actually.  At this point my only option left would be to go to a university setting for a second opinion and to see if they take more of an interest in it.  I haven't pursued this option due to them very slowly getting better (the right arm, at least).

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Virmir

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Reply #59 on: November 03, 2015, 12:22:01 AM
I'm not going to post the numbers anymore since that was getting tedious and at this point not really informative anymore.  Overall both arms did worse in October, although due to non drawing factors in both cases.  (Including some trackball experiments to get me through my work days.)

However since I started drawing with my mouth seriously this month, that has been a major game changer in my schedule.  I didn't draw with the arms anywhere near the schedule posted last month, which means they are getting a lot more rest.  So far I've managed to finish one CF comic entirely with my mouth (page 351!) within a five day period and a second by starting off the sketch with my right hand and then finishing everything else my mouth.  It's looking like I'll be able to bring CF back up to its normal weekly pace using this method regardless of how the arms feel, although I want to churn out a page a week for at least eight weeks in a row before making this decision.  So we shall see in six more weeks!

I am a bit disappointed that I'm not seeing dramatic improvement since the arms' drawing time has been cut back mostly to the weekends, although this past week has been better so it's probably a bit too early to tell.  We'll see how it goes over the next two months.  This suggests that my controlled drawing sessions weren't causing any additional damage anyway.

The other change is I finally got a TENS unit, so have been getting in the habit of shocking my arms.  Yay!  I dismissed this idea when I initially looked into it last year since I'm more interested in a cure over temporary pain relief, however apparently this increases blood flow to the injured tendons as well which supposedly helps them heal more quickly, so it's worth a shot.

Recent drawing sessions have shown that the right arm does much better with sketching and inking than anything else, so that's what I'll be limiting it to for the foreseeable future.

The current drawing schedule, which has been evolving over the past 2 to 3 weeks is looking something like:

Monday-- sketch comic with right arm, start inking with mouth (although it has been feeling good enough that I may let the right arm ink in a couple of weeks)
Tuesday-Friday-- finish comic entirely with the mouth
Friday-- possible other art in the evening with the left hand if comic is done and if it feels up to it
Saturday-- right handed afternoon, as long as it feels capable (sketching and inking only).  Maybe mouth doodles at night
Sunday-- left handed day

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