During the last couple of months I've started using Indian clubs in a few of my exercises. Indian clubs look like baseball bats, but they're smaller, and the end of the handle is round like a ball, so you can rotate them more easily in your hands. They come in different sizes and weights. The ones I have are 16 inches long and weigh 1 pound. I bought the smallest ones because I was afraid of hurting myself.

Indian clubs are another part of circular strength training. I've been using them to do a lot of circles with my wrists and a few things for my shoulders. Holding the club creates a little more torque and traction when you're doing an exercise, to help stretch the muscles, and open up the joints a little bit more. In the beginning, my hands would usually swell, and get tight and inflamed after using them, but this seems to be getting better as things gradually loosen up.

I know it sounds crazy for someone with the TOS to be swinging things around but it seems to be helping me. A year ago, if someone told me I'd be doing this, I would have said, "That's ridiculous, there's no way I could ever do that," but here I am. The key is, everything I've done has been gradual and incremental, one baby step after another. It's taken tons of patience and creativity.