Since September I’ve been attending a dance conditioning class. It’s been great – my balance has improved and it works on flexibility. It seems dancers get muscle spasms/injuries in much the same places as weavers. 🙂 (Although I already knew that, having studied dance when I was younger – much younger!)
My instructor is obviously very knowledgeable about body mechanics and co-incidentally, yesterday she talked about hand positions. She observed that any time the hand is in the thumbs down position, this is very hard on the body, in particular the shoulders (rotator cuff).
I immediately thought of all those weavers I see all over the continent who hold and throw their shuttles like this:
When you hold the shuttle thumbs down the shoulder is raised out of neutral position and the lower arm is twisted. With the thumb in the up position the shoulder can stay in neutral reducing stress on the muscles of the shoulder and neck and the lower arm is not twisted but straight.
If you have shoulder problems you might want to think very seriously about changing your shuttle holding position if you hold the shuttle in the thumbs down orientation.
Likewise you might want to look at how you hold the hook for threading and sleying. I use a Harrisville brass hook and hold it this way:
Even if you only pull one thread through one at a time, a mere flick of the wrist will do the job rather than having to move the entire arm and shoulder.
If you haven’t watched my video clips on You Tube you might want to take a few minutes and watch them.
The happy result of changing your hand position is that you can do more weaving with less fatigue and sometimes people share with me that they can accomplish more with less effort. And that has to be A Good Thing?
Currently reading Threadbare by Monica Ferris