Rice bucket or one-sided dumbbell exercises for De Quervain's? Any way to tape for it?

I’ve had a lingering wrist injury that’s sometimes fine but often bothers me when I try hard, especially on slopers and pinches. I’ll get a popping sensation an inch or so down my wrist from the base of my thumb. It’s in between the main tendons. I have a lesser version of the exact same problem on the pinky side, but thumb side is much worse and more chronic. If I drop two grades below my project grade it’s fine. And what I consider project grade is anything that takes more than a few tries.

Woke up with pretty significant pain where I drew those left lines. If I rest it’ll feel fine again but it’ll come back whenever I return to climbing hard, whether I give it a day or a month. I think it’s De Quervain's. Any way to tape for it?

Would rice bucket exercises help more, or small dumbbell mobility exercises and if so, what would you recommend?

I had De Quervain's flare up and diagnosed last summer and was all better after maybe 2 months. The pain was similar to where the thumb-side line is in your photo, but further into the thumb where the sheaths are. It was a little tender all of the way to the anatomical snuffbox (the body's natural ergonomic place for snorting cocaine, literally what it's called). Like you, pinches and slopers were the worst. 

The main diagnostic tool as far as I know is the Finkelstein test. (That also happens to be the best stretch as part of rehab).

I wore a thumb splint/brace only at night while sleeping, basically to let it rest and prevent sleeping with the hand in a weird position and further inflaming it. If you sleep with your hand under your head or twist around a lot, this might help a bunch. Taping wise, I used this method with KT tape and it actually felt pretty good. Did it help? Dunno, but when done tight, it felt like it was creating some space and relief. On climbing days I usually had to re-do as sweat and movement would loosen the tape up. I guess I should have just shaved my hairy man arms. Ha. 

But you know what I think helped the most? Getting off of my damn phone. I'm not a terrible phone-addict, but typing with the thumb and scrolling was not helping, so I changed those habits. Incidentally, that taping method above makes it harder to type on a phone with your thumbs. :) 

Oh and I did some scraping with a WaveTool/Gua Sha and sometimes CBD balm along the forearm. You could also try dry needling potentially.

Other than that, I backed off grades a bit and climbed through it, avoiding slopes and pinches or hold positions that caused pain. Wrist brace at night, Finkelstein stretching, ice, adjusting phone habits and time.

I'm not a medical professional, but in my experience, complete rest is counterproductive to healing tendon issues. They need blood flow and time, and total rest doesn't promote blood and therefore healing. My gut feeling was I needed to keep using it, but also not completely inflame it all of the time. There's an interesting take on elbow tendonitis from the strength training world, where you actually do things like high volume barbell curls to inflame the crap out of the elbow, thus promoting blood flow. I hadn't thought about it, but the rice bucket could do the same thing for these wrist tendons and extensors. That said, I'd personally be conservative and try other more typical things before going down that road, and maybe even see a doc or two. ;) 

The pinky side thing is interesting. I'm not sure what movement in climbing would cause those extensors (or whatever) to get inflamed. New mothers get De Quarvain's from picking a baby up over and over, so the opposite of that motion seems odd.

Good luck!

Justin P wrote:

New mothers get De Quarvain's from picking a baby up over and over, so the opposite of that motion seems odd.

Good luck!

Not even just new mothers, but pregnant women. I got it when I was still pregnant with my daughter. Apparently the way your joints and whatever loosen up makes you more susceptible to it. I agree that being on the phone and also, in my case, typing for work definitely did not help. I was fortunate enough to be able to convince my Healthcare Providers to allow me PT for it after I had my daughter and couldn't even pick her up without pain. 

What I personally felt was the most helpful exercise was taking a strong rubber band, like one that you might get off a bushel of asparagus, and putting it around all of your fingers and stretching it outwards opening your fingers up away from your palm.

I did also wear a brace at night which helped with the throbbing pain that seemed kind of consistent throughout the night. I forget the reasoning for it but I guess that is common. I would be cautious with braces though. They will definitely help at night to keep you from sleeping with your wrists in weird positions, but they can be counterproductive to actual healing.