Increasing Endurance
Stretching and reducing inflammation are only a small part of healing an RSI. If you have isolated the particular activity that has caused your injury you should stop doing this immediately. You can build up your ability to do this task again, but you have to do it very slowly. The details of this are discussed below. It is important to understand that once you have developed an RSI, many activities will aggravate it further in addition to the ones that caused it in the first place. For example, walking can be extremely problematic for a serious arm based RSI, regardless of whether or not you keep your hands in your pockets.
Seeing a doctor is important because there is a certain amount of time you should wait, letting inflammation decrease and stretching your arms, before you recommence your physical activities [building them up slowly].
Healthy and well functioning arms function as a result of gradually increasing a time limit on the activity that can, or did, damage them. Some people have healthy and well functioning arms and don't pay attention to Time limits. There are a variety of reasons why this isn't necessary for these people. Obviously the better in shape you are in, the better you eat, the more resilient you are to this injury. Also, something you do only rarely, you may be able to do for a longer period of time without injury than if you did it on a regular basis.
Time limits are things that must be taken into consideration for people who are performing a repetitive task on a regular basis. Under these conditions, When your arms are pushed to the limits of their capabilities, there is a definite time limit of usage your tendons can tolerate per day.
Generally, it is a good strategy to start any new physical activity at 10 minutes per day. When recovering from a serious RSI, it might be better to start from five minutes per day. It is an accepted theory in human physiology that you should not increase the time limit of an activity more than 10 or 20% per week. When healing from a repetitive strain injury, this is the technique for building up more arm usage time on a weekly basis.
The theory is that your arms capability for endurance can only increase at this rate. The tendons grow thicker without tearing in this way. Time limits must be implemented consistently. If you take half a week off using your arms, you are interrupting the thickening of the tendons. This will make you unprepared for an increase of time in the next week, making you more susceptible to further injury.
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