The top's own body

Everything written about the physical side of this assumes the interesting body is the one bent over the sofa. Meanwhile the person doing the work is standing in an awkward position, swinging a few hundred times, and quietly developing a sore elbow that nobody has ever mentioned to them.

Consenting adults only. Everything on this page is about adults over 18 who have freely agreed to it.

Written from first-hand experience or extensive research by the editor.

I got a properly sore elbow a few years ago from one long session on a bed that was too low, and it took six weeks to settle. Nobody had ever suggested this could happen, because the whole literature is written as though the person swinging is a piece of equipment rather than a body.

So this page is the other half of the anatomy page. None of it will put you in hospital, but these are the injuries that quietly end people's involvement in this, usually without them connecting the two.

The hand

Hand spanking is the one that surprises people. You are striking a well-padded part of somebody else with a poorly padded part of yourself, and the maths of that only works if your technique is right.

What gets hurt is predictable. The heel of the palm takes it if you are leading with the base of the hand, which most people do without knowing, and it aches deeply for a day or two afterwards. The fingertips take it if the hand is cupped or the fingers are stiff, and that produces a sharper, more localised soreness in the joints. Both come from the same underlying error, which is tension.

The correction is worth practising on a cushion before you use it on a person. Hand flat, fingers together but loose, wrist firm rather than rigid, and the aim is for the whole palm and the length of the fingers to land at the same moment.

A relaxed hand delivered that way stings a great deal more than a tense one and costs you almost nothing, because the impact is spread across your whole hand instead of concentrating in one corner of it. If you are coming away with a bruised hand while they are barely pink, the problem is not that you are hitting too hard.

Rings come off first. Every time, without exception. There is more on the hand as an implement at implements.

Wrists and elbows

Here is the framing that changed how I think about this. A long session is a single repetitive movement performed several hundred times, with resistance at the end of each repetition. Put that description in front of a physiotherapist without mentioning what the activity is and they will tell you it is a textbook recipe for overuse strain in the forearm and the outside of the elbow.

What makes it worse is predictable. A heavy implement swung from the wrist rather than the elbow. A grip held tight throughout instead of firm at impact and loose between. Long unbroken runs. Going harder to compensate for an implement that is not doing the work for you.

What helps is unglamorous. Swing from the elbow and shoulder, let the implement carry its own weight, break the session into rounds with real pauses, and change hands occasionally if you can do it accurately. Alternating hands also tests whether you have been relying on force rather than placement, because your weaker side exposes that immediately. A cane is the exception: it weighs almost nothing and accuracy matters more than strain, so it moves from the elbow with a little wrist, as using a cane explains.

Shoulders, and the weight of things held out

A cane weighs very little, and a cane held at arm's length for two minutes while somebody composes themselves is not a light object at all. Static holding tires the shoulder more than the swinging does, so the pauses that are good for the scene are often what costs you most.

Rest the implement against your leg between strokes and lower your arm during the long silences instead of holding the pose. Nobody bent over a chair can see what your arm is doing, and the tension is coming from the silence rather than your posture.

Warming up, which nobody does

We tell everybody to warm the other person up for twenty minutes and then walk into it cold ourselves. Two minutes of rolling the shoulders, circling the wrists and opening the hands, done while the kettle boils, is enough to notice the difference in a long session.

The warm-up page is about them, but the principle applies to you as well. Past forty I would treat it as compulsory, since the first dozen strokes are the ones where your shoulder is coldest and your accuracy is worst.

Grip, balance and the wrong implement

An implement that is too heavy, or badly balanced, makes you compensate at the wrist without noticing. What you will notice is that one particular paddle always leaves you sore while another of similar size does not, and the difference is usually where the weight sits relative to the handle.

A smooth handle with no shaping has to be gripped harder to control, and grip force through a whole session is what tires the forearm. If something needs a white-knuckle hold to keep it pointing where you want it, it is the wrong implement for you regardless of how good it looks.

Sweat catches people out mid-scene. Hands get damp, grip degrades, and a heavy implement moving fast is a bad thing to lose hold of. Keep a towel within reach, wipe your hands during the pauses you are taking anyway, and stop using anything you have already nearly dropped once.

Where you stand, and your back

This is the one that got me. Reaching across a low bed means bending at the waist and rotating at the same time, several hundred times, which is the classic way to injure a lower back doing something that felt effortless at the time. Stooping over a low sofa arm does the same thing with less rotation and more duration.

The fix costs nothing. Raise the target rather than lowering yourself. A couple of pillows under the hips brings everything up to a workable height and improves the presentation at the same time, which is why lying across a bed says to use them.

Bring the person to the edge of the bed rather than reaching into the middle of it. Stand square on rather than twisting, move your feet instead of your spine, and if you find yourself leaning further and further across as the session goes on, stop and reposition instead of stretching.

Kneeling beside the bed works for the same reason, although it swaps a back problem for a knee one, so put something down first.

Stopping because you have had enough

People are strangely ashamed of this, and they should not be. I have ended sessions because my arm was going and I would do it again tomorrow.

The argument is not about your comfort. A tired arm is an inaccurate arm. Strokes land higher than you intended, the tip of anything long starts wrapping onto the hip, and force goes uneven because you are recruiting your whole body to cover for a forearm that has stopped cooperating. Nearly every accidental injury I know about happened in the last ten minutes of a long session rather than the first ten.

So say it out loud, in plain language, and treat it exactly as you would treat them using a colour: that is enough, we are stopping now. It needs no apology and it does not require a story. The same principle sits behind pacing a scene, and knowing your own endurance is part of knowing the shape of the evening before you start.

When it does not settle

Ordinary soreness fades in a day or two. What is worth acting on is pain that lasts beyond that, pain that arrives earlier in each successive session, any numbness or pins and needles in the hand or forearm, and grip that has started failing at ordinary tasks like carrying shopping.

None of that is something a website can help you with. It is a GP or a physiotherapist question, and the good news is that you do not have to explain where it came from. Repetitive strain from a hobby involving a repeated swinging movement is a complete and truthful account, and racquet sports have produced the same presentation for a century.

The part that is not physical

Worth ending here, because the forearm is not where most of the wear lands. Concentrating for an hour on somebody else's state while managing your own is tiring in a way that surprises people the first few times, and the comedown afterwards is real and under-discussed. That has its own page at top drop, and if you are new to this side of it, start at topping for the first time.