Overuse Injuries From Work, Shooting, Reloading

Like all others...40 years hockey, nurseryman, arborist. Autoimmune problems controlled with humira but now in remission and the joint pain kicks in. Try to eat zero plant based carbs to keep inflammation down. I use a 3000 mg CBD creme that is incredible and worth the dollars. I also infrared sauna all winter which is great. I think if I retire I will cripple up, so lucky I enjoy my work.

Man, I feel bad for you guys. My joints get really stiff if I sit still for very long. Drive the 45 mins home from work after a rough day, and It's rough just getting out of the Jeep. Once I get moving it's not so bad. Doesn't really hurt, just doesn't wanna function.

I gave my Uncle Sammy right ankle in 72, and a left knee in 75. Now the Itis family comes to visit, and ovetstays their welcome, especially the Arthur and Burs Itis boys. I have a cane now; I don't really need it to walk, but it keeps me from falling down sometimes.

The answer for most joint pain problems is Knox unflavored gelatin. I was told of this a year ago and have been taking it since. One packet stirred in with my morning cup of coffee has completely eliminated the pain in my joints (knees, ankles, and shoulders) as well as the arthritis that has made hand movement difficult for over three years. Try it.

I kept an 06 FFL (ammunition manufacturing license) for 20 years. I lost count of how many rounds of metallic and shot shell I loaded, probably in the 100,000 range all on manually operated presses. I ended up having a total shoulder replacement, right shoulder. My left is fine so reloading had an impact. I still reload just not over 100 rounds per session. Down side is recoil sensitivity. No heavy recoil rifles or shotguns.
I also worked in power plants for 40 years, climbing flight after flight of stairs. That resulted in total joint replacement of both hips and knees.

This one hits pretty close to home for me as in my youth, like most other kids, I was invincible. Pretty sure I could cut myself and watch it heal, never had a broken bone, etc. These days, I can reach up to grab a box of toothpicks and pinch a nerve or even worse, I can get hurt sleeping wrong.

I would have never thought I could mess up sleeping in a million years, how could you do that wrong? Anyhow, got up at 4:00 this morning, went to work, not wanting a repeat tonight, so I can enjoy shooting tomorrow. I did reload for about an hour to take my mind off of other things though. Not exactly a woman rubbing me down with oil and hot rocks with ocean sounds but cheaper and still worked...

I worked on cars from the age of 16 to about 45 as a hobby and sometimes for a living. Besides that, I worked on radios and electronics from about 7 years old until today. I was a bouncer in a nightclub and later on a security guard in a hotel that was almost more like an insane asylum. By the time I was 45, I had a painful left shoulder that therapy (my life story) made worse. My hands were hurting most of the time and in the winter, they just killed me when I would hold a cold steering wheel. When I was 51, I had an amazingly bad fall just walking into a gas station to go, and it started a nearly 4 month long string of injury after injury to my right shoulder, right knee (nerve damage), and left knee (Totally torn off my quadriceps). Two of the injuries occurred in therapy. On top of that, I have inherited back issues. My great-great-great-great grandmother came from Ireland at 12 by herself married at 14, had 8 kids that survived to adulthood, and every single person descended from her, except one, has the same back issues she had, and I do. Bad discs, bone spurs, etc. Every time my mother would find another cousin, it was "Oh, you have a bad back too? All of us (siblings) have back issues too!"

I just go on, and pay the price when I do something I shouldn't, like vacuum, use vise grips or pliers doing any kind of work that takes a firm grip (My hands don't like that at all), or pick up anything weighing more than about 30 pounds with my right arm. If I do, I can feel my bicep ripping. I can pick up more than 30 pounds with my left arm, but if I swing out my arm at even a 5 degree angle, my shoulder hurts enough to make me instantly regret doing it. My right elbow is starting to ache, along with my left hip, which seems to have developed something wrong since I nearly fell down during the last time it got icy out. My left leg slid out to the left and I grabbed the door of my car to keep from falling and something in my left hip clicked, and now it's randomly painful.

The heated steering wheel in my car is, IMHO, the greatest option in a car. My hands are actually pain free 75% of the time, and only hurt bad if I really work with them. Before, after a winter of grabbing the cold wheel, my hands throbbed 24/7. If I shoot, my hands hurt, it's just not for as long as it was before. I have the steering wheel heat turned on anytime it's under 70 degrees.

Isn't it fun getting old?

59 here, and have most of the aches and pains mentioned. Actually starting to look at some firearms with the viewpoint of "how much does it weigh and do I want to carry it long?". Also starting to look at various smaller calibers.

After going through this thread I've determined that we are really one heck of a bunch of physically screwed up people!

I spent yesterday laying on my living room floor with heating pad on my back and ice packs on my knee amd ankle. looks like thats how i will spend today.

Fence building, hay baling, corn scooping, wrench pulling has been my life. I wrecked my shoulders pulling t posts, then again in April when I laid my tractor/trailer over dumping a load of lime.
Cortisone shot #2 in my right shoulder 10 days ago is helping.
My doc says to be certain to keep that (ALEVE) dose regularly BEFORE the pain sets in.
Good advice.
To keep this shooting related, I ordered some things to lighten my recoil while shooting trap.

I already have recoil reducers in my guns.

When I worked for the state of Tennessee I went on a tour of the Nissan plant in Smyrna, TN and the Corvette plant in Bowling Green, KY. At the Nissan plant workers were trained on different assembly stations and were regularly rotated through those positions to reduce repetitive motion injury. The GM plant didn't rotate workers, they worked the same station all the time.

I had coronary by-pass surgery back in 1990 and arthritis settled in my sternum. The pain can be unbelievable when I over exert my upper body. I use a single stage press for my reloading and sometimes I have to quit for a few days before I can get back to it. The Army wasn't very gentle with my body, I have arthritis in nearly all the joints in my body plus torn rotator cuffs in both shoulders. I shot 200 rounds of 9mm through my Micro 9 the other day and that was all the arthritis in my right hand wanted to tolerate.

Armored farmer said:

Fence building, hay baling, corn scooping, wrench pulling has been my life. I wrecked my shoulders pulling t posts, then again in April when I laid my tractor/trailer over dumping a load of lime.
Cortisone shot #2 in my right shoulder 10 days ago is helping.
My doc says to be certain to keep that (ALEVE) dose regularly BEFORE the pain sets in.
Good advice.
To keep this shooting related, I ordered some things to lighten my recoil while shooting trap.
View attachment 921643
I already have recoil reducers in my guns.

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You want to lighten your recoil while shooting shotgun, try reloading 3/4oz in 12 and 20. I do and they are awesome. The 12 ga load even works both of my Beretta semi autos with zero malfunctions. Add to that, instead of 400 rounds of 1oz loads from a bag of shot, you'll get 533...............been reloading this load since they came out with the wad.........

I’ve injured my shoulder and forearm lifting weights a few times now. It can make shooting big bores more difficult. It definitely can impact my reloading.

My credit card frequently gets sore, and my wallet hurts......

I hate to hear your pain but I have a long time before reloading is my biggest ill!
That said j frame practice has had my right arm numb at times. I can see how a progressive can cause pain

My overuse is from work..and because I have a defective forearm.

Carpal tunnel both wrists....multiple cortisone shots AND a career change due to right shoulder pain/inflamation, left shoulder isnt much better and I have slipped disc on my low back...age 50...been working since I started working for local ( at the time) farmers at age 16 and have been working in one factory or another for about 30 years now.

I'm an auto mechanic, I end up exerting maximum force in awkward positions more than I'd care for. If I can work in a comfortable position I'm just fine and I'll use leverage or mechanical advantage whenever possible but it does wear you down over the years. It's going to affect everyone differently though, my hands, wrists , arms, shoulders and knees thankfully are still in excellent condition. My back is not so good though. I consider myself lucky, as some of you know I'm a magnum-aholic. I've been warned by wiser men that I'll develop painful joints and other issues including possibly nerve damage from shooting the big stuff but it really hasn't done any damage that I can detect. I'm not an old man yet either though, a few weeks short of 36 years old. So I do my best to stay in good physical condition, technique plays a part, I try not to fight recoil and I try to keep my work activities low impact whenever possible. I don't expect to be in perfect condition 20 years from now but I would hope to still feel well enough to work and play as I do now- maybe with just a little more creaks and stiffness.

Dudedog said:

My credit card frequently gets sore, and my wallet hurts......

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As do my ears when the wife opens the monthly statements....

I'll actually get knee pain from standing for too long at the reloading bench (I have a really bad right knee; Osgood-Schlatter as a kid, 3 surgeries from a dislocation, a torn ACL, and a patella release with partially torn/peeled articular cartilage from right femur, etc.). I stood and loaded the 500 red-white-blue bullets I got last weekend for a few hours each on Sat and Sun and I had to ice the old joint for three straight nights in order to sleep well.

(I'm lucky! I just get sore when I overuse the joint, a lot of my friends are far worse off than me with debilitating back injuries, having fought cancers, etc.)

Stay safe.

Getting old sucks, and the wear and tear on joints is cumulative, and usually permanent. I have the beginnings of RA, my mother has it really bad. I've had carpal tunnel surgery on both wrists when in my late '50s. I have a rotator cuff injury from a partial dislocation of my left shoulder from a car wreck 22 years ago. I have a hard time holding a rifle or shotgun freehand for more than half a minute, but luckily can still shoot from the bench, shotgunning is in motion, so not too much of a problem, and handgunning is okay. Knees and back, I've had to learn how to do certain tasks in ways to protect them, otherwise I'd be in really poor shape (for the shape I'm already in). I've seen too many joint replacements to want one for myself (was an O.R. Nurse for 36 years), although I know quite a few people with hip and knee replacements that are happy they can move again.

My right thumb, hand, and wrist are not aging well. By age 50, in 2011, I had to stop shooting my .40 S&W P229 duty pistol right-handed. In late 2015, my chief OK’ed 9mm duty pistols, so I switched to G19 and G17 for personal-time and duty carry. By 2017, I had to stop shooting 9mm Glock G19 pistols right-handed. As few as 80 rounds of standard-pressure 9mm could provoke swelling and pain, that lasted for a week or so.

G17 pistols, and all-steel, full-sized 1911 pistols remain OK, probably because the long grip frames reach all the way to the “heel bone” of the hand, resulting my much more stability, to mitigate muzzle flip.

How did I train, when I could not shoot my P229 duty pistol, with my right hand? Well, .22 LR became my friend, fired from my S&W Model 17-4 revolver. My P229 was DAK, with a trigger pull that nicely mimics a K-Frame DA revolver trigger. (DAK was my choice; I was a rebel, in adopting the DAK trigger, when some supervisors thought that only DA/SA SIGs were allowed. I had to only qual on night shift, to avoid trouble.)

I believe that much of the damage, in my case, was caused by shooting big-bore Magnums, in the Eighties, with N-Frames, with my K/L-Frame-sized hands. I had started the academy, in 1983, with L-Frames, as having a 4” .357 Mag revolver was required, but after graduation, I thought that I “needed” a big bore, for the street. By the time I transitioned to a .45 ACP 1911 duty/carry pistol, in 1990, I had done plenty of damage.

My left hand is aging more gracefully. There is the general age-related discomfort, but no concentration of pain in the thumb and wrist. I am, actually, left-handed, but somewhat ambidextrous, and chose to carry “primary” at 0300, because I am right-armed, for things like throwing, so drawing big revolvers from the then-mandated, low-slung, flap-style duty rig felt natural. The DA trigger seemed handedness-neutral, to me, and it was easier do get to a weapon on my right hip, while driving. So, I have carried at or near 0300, since then. I reckon that this could well change, sooner or later.

A few years ago, I bought a tiny, very-well-made, right-hand holster, made by C. Rusty Sherrick, for my Seecamp pistol, with the idea that I might use it while transitioning to left-hand “primary” carry. This was so that I have a weapon on my right hip, in case I reflexively reach for 0300, when my “primary” weapon is on the left hip. Carrying two handguns is nothing new, for me, as I tended to do so while I still an LEO, but what would be new is carrying the larger weapon on my left side.

I want to repeat part of my above post, for emphasis. Handguns that have long grip frames, that reach all the way to the “heel bone” area of my hand, cause MUCH less physical trauma, while shooting. In my case, “square butt” is important, too, as opposed to “round butt.”

Another factor is a low bore axis. That is why I switched to Glocks, at the same time I switched to 9mm. Classic DA SIGs have a high bore axis. Glocks and the 1911 have a notably lower bore axis.

I developed De Quervain's tenosynovitis from reloading magazines. It flares up from time to time and is very unpleasant.

At 71 I've survived working in agriculture, The concrete repair game and the last 15 years in a concrete casting factory. A few minor aches and pains but can't complain. My mother said that if i used my right hand too much i would go blind. I'm beginning to think she may have been right. My eye sight not what it was.