There are many ways to avoid shoulder pain. Being office workers, we are very prone to neck and shoulder overuse for most of the day. I used to sit all day with my hands on the keyboard and mouse at least 8 hours a day. Holding this vulnerable position caused excessive internal shoulder rotation. In addition to those long periods at work, my poor hand position while driving was putting my shoulder muscles right back in that same internally rotated, poor posture position.
The combination of poor computer posture and poor driving posture added up to be a minimum 9 hours of my day. My hands and arms were overused. I had neck and shoulder pain at work and in the car. Eventually, these repetitive strain injuries became chronic. I’d deal with them regardless of what I was doing. This affected me during exercise. It even affected me when I slept, because my shoulders were stuck in that internally rotated position. Our muscles are meant to be strong and resilient. However, they aren’t meant to be held in the exact same position for 8 or more hours a day.
The point of this article isn’t to tell you exactly where correct hand positioning is on the steering wheel. In my opinion, it’s not that simple. A typical driver’s ed course told us to put them at “10 o’clock and 2 o’clock.” But that could be what’s making our internal shoulder rotation worse. Here’s an example…
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