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Permalink Reply by James Doyle on December 27, 2009 at 12:29pm

While better posture may help, you might also simply be tamping too hard. One of the things I discovered about myself early in my coffee career was that after a while, the standard 30 pounds of pressure I thought I was using to tamp had actually ramped up into almost 45 pounds and I was doing way more work than I needed to. As the years passed, and I had several arm injuries (doubly bad, being both a musician and barista) I really began to experiment with how I tamped and found that using a lighter tamp and finer grind could serve me just as well, and didn't require so much out of me. I would definitely play with those things as you evaluate your technique.

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Permalink Reply by lance battenfield on December 8, 2011 at 7:29pm

try using you body weight not your arm.

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Permalink Reply by Mike McGinness on December 12, 2011 at 7:34am

Exactly. Line up your wrist and forearm perpendicular to PF, elbow bent and locked as is shoulder also lockced, basically entire hand holding tamper up to shoulder locked extension of tamper. Then do slight deep knee bend for the tamp power. Your legs are your strongest limbs, use them.

lance battenfield said:

try using you body weight not your arm.

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Permalink Reply by lance battenfield on December 12, 2011 at 8:48am

also, to get a feel for a good 30 pound try pushing on your scale. Try to apply the same amount of pressure to the espresso.

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