String hand pain?

[Srongchoo]

Having some problems on my string hand. All of a sudden my middle finger at the second joint is on fire when I shoot. It's perfectly fine throughout the day, but if I pick up my bow and shoot the pain is there immediately. After shooting it is sore for several hours and difficult to move.

Anybody deal with this? Shooting with a tab and deep hook. I took several days off shooting hopeful it would help and it has not.

[Walt Francis]

I had intense pain in all three of my finger joints (the ones closest to the finger nails) for three years.  I had to use a glove with hard inserts to take the pressure off of the tendons.  Found it helped my release but it was harder to handle the arrows.  After three years the fingers were good enough I could use a Damascus glove without any pain.  That was almost twenty years back, haven't had any issues with them since.

[McDave]

There's muscle pain and there's joint pain.  Muscle pain is the easiest to deal with.  Are you drawing the bow with a relaxed string hand, so that the back of your hand appears flat with no protruding knuckles (good)?  Are you bending your middle finger so you can get the string in the first joint of all three fingers (bad)?

[Srongchoo]

There's muscle pain and there's joint pain.  Muscle pain is the easiest to deal with.  Are you drawing the bow with a relaxed string hand, so that the back of your hand appears flat with no protruding knuckles (good)?  Are you bending your middle finger so you can get the string in the first joint of all three fingers (bad)?

Relaxed string hand yes. Can you post a picture of what you mean on keeping the back of your hand flat?

[McDave]

Relaxed string hand yes. Can you post a picture of what you mean on keeping the back of your hand flat?

Relaxed string hand:

[attachment=1,msg3007480]

Tense string hand:

[attachment=2,msg3007480]

[MnFn]

I had pretty intense pain in my bow hand, so maybe different but I saw a Physical Therapist who specializes in hand pain.

He treated it as tendinitis and after measuring my hand flexibility and strength,  proscribed a series of stretches or exercises.  It took about a month but I got rid of all pain in my hand.

When I was rehabbing from triple bypass and walking on a tread mill or just walking,  I would repeatedly do these exercises at the same time. Very easy to do and it worked for me.

[David Mitchell]

Great pics, McDave

[Ruttinghard]

MnFn would you be willing to share those exercises with us? Thanks!