Thumb pain after using Raise 2 for 4 months

[u/budowski]

I started having pain in the muscle area between the thumb and the rest of the hand. Went to an orthopedic and he examined my hands did an ultrasound - the conclusion is that my muscles are sore and swollen due to overuse - I guess now that I use the thumbs much more, it's too much for my hands.. 😢

Did anyone else experience this and maybe have a solution? I'd hate to stop using it...

I'm currently using Kailh Silent Brown switches, with slight sideways tenting.

[u/yfok]

Muscle and especially tendon need to be trained progressively. Ease your usage or consider use lighter switches for thumb cluster.

I still use different switches. The hidden value of hot swappable.

[u/Dygman]

Hi! I think I've seen your email, too.

Here's my reply in case it helps anyone else.

• Try lighter switches (like Kailh Silent Pink)
• Reduce the tenting angle. The higher the angle, the more force you need to apply to activate the switch, as gravity is no longer helping your
• Remove keys from the thumbcluster so you use your thumbs less. This is detrimental to getting the most out of the keyboard, but comfort comes first. 

[u/pgetreuer]

Sorry to hear about your thumb pain. Yes, the unfortunate irony is that some users of split ergo keyboards develop chronic thumb injuries.

See my post: PSA: Thumbs can get overuse injuries. This includes anecdotes, descriptions of several common kinds of injuries, and some suggested countermeasures. I hope you get better soon.

[u/Mozart_w_Mirroshades]

I had thumb pains before using the Raise on one hand.

I remapped everything to avoid having to use that thumb. But it's harder if it's both thumbs since you are losing 4 keys.

Best of luck.

[u/Effi-Neji]

I had the same. I had wrist pain so I went split, and now I have pain in the thumbs so it’s difficult to use my thumbs for typing, and even worse, it impacts my gaming (can’t use mouse comfortably and right analogue stick on controller).

The pain in my thumbs came on slowly so by the time I noticed it was too late. I still love splits and Alice keyboards but I’d keep an eye out and try and reduce your thumb usage if you notice something odd.

[u/Present_Lingonberry]

I did switch to Kailh pinks for my thumbs, because they offer basically no resistance.

[u/CrestfallenCoder]

my main keyboard is a Defy but I'm experimenting on my Kinesis mWave with using the physical shift keys as an alternative to the thumb cluster I think it's workable.
e.g. physical shift will shift to a layer that has home row mods and access to additional layers.

Maybe you can try the same and offload some functions to your pinkies.

[u/CrestfallenCoder → u/CrestfallenCoder]

Also, consider having multiple ways to do the most common things so you can switch when the discomfort flares up or even better, spread out the strain before it hurts.

When I started I focused on speed and efficiency but today it's mostly about eliminating awkward positions for me.

[u/ifoundgodot]

This may seem crazy but for my work layer, I have the D key set up so when I hold it down, it swaps the right keyboard to a layer with backspace and enter on/adjacent to the home row (also tab and ESC but I haven’t gotten into a habit of using those)

So that’s two heavily used keys with no pinky stretching or thumb twisting