Hand therapy in Mount Waverley.

A lot of the time, that approach leaves people with stiffness, weakness, or pain that lingers for months — sometimes years. Hands are intricate. They don’t recover the same way a knee or shoulder does. They need targeted treatment.

What I treat

• Tendon injuries — tennis elbow, golfer’s elbow, de Quervain’s, trigger finger
• Repetitive strain — from tool use, typing, or any high-volume hand task
• Carpal tunnel and nerve compression in the wrist and forearm
• Post-fracture rehab — wrist, hand, finger
• Post-surgical rehab — after tendon repair, fixation, or release procedures
• Chronic stiffness in the hand and fingers, especially after immobilisation
• Grip strength loss that’s affecting work or training

Why tradies’ hands need a different approach

If you grip tools for a living — plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, electricians — your hands are doing more in a day than most people’s do in a week.

That’s not a metaphor. It’s a load problem. Repeated gripping, vibration from power tools, awkward forces, and impact all add up to tissue strain that doesn’t heal between shifts. By the time pain shows up, the structures have usually been working overtime for a long while.

I treat this often. The approach combines hands-on work to release tight tissues with targeted strengthening that fits around the work — because telling a tradie to “rest the hand” isn’t realistic.

More on tradie pain →

What a session looks like

• Detailed assessment — the hand has a lot of structures, so the assessment matters
• Hands-on treatment — soft tissue work, joint mobilisation, dry needling where useful
• Specific exercises — usually short and targeted, not a long program
• Activity advice — what to modify at work or in training, what to keep doing