29.10.07

Aaaarrrrgggghhhhh!

Posted in Juggling, Rants, Reviews at 11:58 pm by alby

Did I mention that it winds me up when people give dodgy advice out?

There was a thread on the WJF forums about someone or other having wrist pains. They decided to discuss this on the new episode of JoJ (see the forums for the link).

This is where I get grumpy. This is at least the second time they’ve discussed this sort of topic and the second time they’ve talked utter cack about it. To quote Mitchell and Webb: “You may not know a great deal about this but you surely ‘reckon’ something. Come on, what do you reckon?” That seems to be the attitude here.

You can’t tell people stuff about stuff you actually know nothing about. You just can’t do it. OK maybe you can but don’t expect to get away with it.

So it starts with “I hear a lot of jugglers complaining about sore wrists, shoulders etc. Seriously I’m a huge advocate of the whole warming up thing”. Arrrgh!! Banging my head into a wall here. Flexibility is good yes but whether you warm up or not is irrelevant anyway and certainly is if you insist on overworking or having a weird pattern (eg flappy wrists).

Thankfully they didn’t discuss that god awful “wrist stretches for jugglers” video that someone posted in response. I watched that one through my hands with a “oh my god, I can’t believe people think this” thought in my head. Please just don’t, ok?

But the lassie does show some stretches (very briefly) and then explains that she broke her arm when she was younger and they told her to do those stretches. So the same treatment for loosening up a wrist after a break is the same as a warm-up routine then? Apparently. And then “I never have problems unless it’s combat related or soreness related”. So what’s “soreness” if not “pain”? It’s surely the same thing.

Not all wrist pains are the same thing going wrong. Not all treatments, preventions or techniques will be the same or appropriate for everyone. That’s what an assessment is for; to differentiate this stuff.

Many wrist problems are defined as “over-use” but even within that there are different problems with different solutions.

But they move on: she does gymnastics so has strong wrists. He says “well if you do that sort of thing then you don’t need to worry about this stuff.” So apparently gymnasts don’t get wrist injury and pain. That’s a bit like saying builders and gardeners have strong backs so don’t get back injury or pain. Total rubbish.

It’s sad. They clearly mean well and are sympathetic to the original poster and want to tell him (and us) something useful. But it’s not their topic. It’s not what they do. It’s hearsay, poorly informed opinion and nothing more.

I sort of want to go on and put some truths up there. But on the other hand I don’t really want to go on the JoJ show.

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