Unfortunately, Colemak probably won't help your CTS right away. The strain of learning it could well aggravate your condition if you already have a full-blown CTS problem. I think you're on the right track, but be very careful. Don't focus on speed at all to begin with, and stay off Ryan's dangerous site.  ;)

One important thing is arm rest. If your elbows can't rest, it gets stressful. A split board could be nice since it's more compatible with the standard boards you'll be meeting in the outside world, but if you want the most ergonomic boards I think you'll want a Kinesis or suchlike.

When you're done learning Colemak and have lost your CTS, you can learn to type 1-handed Colemak and keep using mouse+keyboard.  ;)

Now my best advice: I've had CTS myself (finishing a doctorate thesis can be tough!), and what helped was ergophysiotherapy. You'll need a well-trained ergophysiotherapist to tell you exactly what exercises are best for your body and condition, but basically it's about doing a lot of exercises for all aspects of the wrists, arms and shoulder area using many repetitions with light loads (e.g., 100 repetitions, 500 g load). Not only will you help your condition, but your muscles and circulation will become better trained so that you avoid getting it again. I've never had a relapse.

hey guys

Thanks for the encouragement!

After another week, my CTS is not too bad, definitely an improvement. And I just learnt Q and C, so I am getting there! :)

DreymaR, thanks for the advice on CTS, great to hear you got on top of it. I will try to find a ergophysiotherapist (never heard of them!), but I think I might struggle as in Australia I live a long way from a major town, and about 1000+ kms from a capital city! ;)

I know what you mean.  The switch bothered me a lot at first but now I haven't had a problem with it for quite a while now and I appreciate having the combinations "ar" "ra" "st" "sp" "est" etc.

ha! strange... I only been using colemak for 3 days and I memorize the keyboard in about 20minutes. My problem is not to type P and L as qwerty. I'm getting over 20wpm, yay!

Don't worry Kez, some people are really fast layout learners and others struggle more. I'm a fast learner in general but I've taken my sweet time getting used to the Colemak nevertheless. It flows well for me now, fortunately, and I've finally surpassed my old QWERTY and Dvorak speeds. Good times.

I noticed that there is actually more strain on the left hand while doing Colemak. I think my problem is I only use the left hand to press shift. Now I'm doing 28wpm with about 95% accuracy.

Same here. I feel that ambidextrous shifting is a significant improvement to my typing.

hey ryanheise, while I agree that using caps as backspace is more use of that hand, it is just too convenient there, plus I plan to make no mistakes soon at all so it wont be needed! ;)

My hand is feeling good at the moment, so will leave as is. Also before learning colemak I had caps disabled anyway! I was always accidently knocking it on all the time and it frustrated me so I turned it off permantely, so I am really not missing it even with my programming.

I also use ambidextrous shifting so that must take a fair load off my left pinkie.

I am now at 33 WPM, haven't had much time to practice this week though. But am extremely pleased with how I have been progressing.

I'm a bit addicted to ryanheise's typing test!

Just an update to how I am going learning Colemak.

I am now averaging 40 WPM, I am extremely pleased as I am up to my speed that I had on the QWERTY layout.

So it has taken me about 12 weeks to get to 40 WPM.

I still make mistakes (r and s still bother me, but not as much) but I am finding it all a lot more natural now, my typing seems to flow, and I don't have to think so much about where the keys are.

I try to practice a few times a day and am a regular (ie addicted) visitor to Ryanheise (the new layout looks good by the way).

I haven't learnt the top row of numbers yet (and their associated Shift characters), so that will be my next challenge, I might wait until I can type slightly faster though.

Just adding another update.

First I have to say that I love Colemak.

Reading back here I can't believe I have been using it for a year and 3 months!

I have plateaud on my speed, I can consistently type about 55-60WPM. With highs in the mid 60's. However I am extremely happy with that. It is certainly more than I ever expected and more than fast enough for anything I do or am required to do with work.

I no longer mix up r and s, it feels very smooth to type and the best thing is that I have basically no Carpal Tunnel Symptoms since swapping.

I am very lazy and have not learned the numbers/top row :(   (I do however know a few that I use quite often)

I believe if I made a conscious effort to slow down my typing slightly and concentrate more on making less mistakes that I would definitely be able to improve on my WPM, however as I don't need to it is on the bottom of my todo pile.

Cheers
Kerrie