This weird thing has been happening to me. Since winter started, I've noticed a significant decrease in the amount of time I CAN practice.

I'm not very fond of warm-ups, but I do some stretching and runs before playing anything full speed. Now, the amount of time my hands STAY warmed up has decreased a lot. Probably because I don't like heat, I love cold, sometimes I don't even turn on the heat in my house, my blood's really warm

Lately, I've been practicing and playing a lot. When I practice, I literally keep playing to the metronome and upping the speed till I feel the burn. But just one hint of a burn, and I'll leave it for 2-5 minutes. I go back, stretch my fingers and massage my hands a bit, and go at it again. Now I'm straining my hands, but its not pain, its the burn, exactly like when you go to the gym and work out.

A point comes when that burn stays, doesn't go away for quite a while. At that point, I can't play even if I wanted to. But I get extremely worried that all the practice I've done will be in vain if I don't try to play more, and that when I'll pick up the guitar again, say in a few hours, I'll have to start all over again and the practice I've just done will be wasted...

Its only been 4 days since all of this has been happening, so before I adopt any bad habits, would someone please tell me whether what I'm doing is safe or dangerous? Or will it affect my technique at all? In a good or a bad way?

Hi mate. You have to be extremely careful with your hands and fingers. You will need from them all your life. I think that if the burn feeling is too strong, you should relax your fingers, and maybe stop playing for a day. The burnt can suddenly become a hurt. I recommend you to dedicate some time to stretches and massages, even now during these days when the feeling is becoming stronger.




There is no hurry to become the most technical guitarists but it's VERY important to take care of your muscles, arms, hands and fingers.

But just one hint of a burn, and I'll leave it for 2-5 minutes - In my opinion you are being a bit too cautious here. If we all had to put down our guitars every time we started noticing the burn we'd never get any solid practise done

However, I do think you're sensible to rest frequently.. but you may be over estimating how much you need to avoid the burn. The burn is normal.. it shows your muscles are working. It's when the burn becomes pain that you're overdoing it. Of course, you don't want to wait for pain to show up before you say 'Ok, that's enough for today'.... so I think you're wise to confront this now. You can probably tell when you've had enough because the burn lingers a lot longer and your hand really does feel too sluggish to do much more. That's a good sign to stop.

Of course, all practise doesn't have to be of the stamina variety... sometimes, practise is more about working on other things. But when you're working on stuff that directly targets things like stamina then you're going to notice this.

The cold weather can and will affect it.. I've also noticed my hands getting tired quicker recently.

Also, are you eating and drinking enough ?

Thanks mate, I have that instructional video somewhere but I can't find it I'll do these from now on



Well, maybe I exaggerated in the first part, I meant more like the muscles right below my pinky start to become sluggish, and its a bit painful to make hammer-ons and pull-offs, that's when I leave the guitar for 2-5 minutes.

I'm almost constantly working on stuff like legato, sweeping, vibrato, and anything related to fast lead guitar. Not much time being spent on practicing phrasing at the moment.

I'm drinking around 4-5 glasses of water a day, and eating two meals a day.

1) warm up!
2) cold will/can make you hurt a little more (it does me).
3) how much did you practice before and how much now?
4) are you doing something hand position wise that's hurting you?
* this is where actual, face to face private lessons REALLY help - instant personal feedback. (Take a private lesson or at least make a video showing your hands.)

Yes, I know what I'm missing out on by not taking private lessons :/ I took a few private lessons when I first started out, and yeah the instructor did tell me how to position my hands and stuff. I'm more like a classical style player, with the guitar resting on my left leg rather than my right, but I use both. When I'm doing scales and exercises and stuff, I just use the regular sitting position (guitar on right leg), then at a point when I want to get faster and/or get better access to the higher frets, I change my position to the classical one, and its SO much more comfortable to me I have a few videos of me playing here, I'll show you my league of extraordinary axemen take.



1) yes I know, I try but I hate warming up will do it more now
2) It probably does for me too... Maybe I need to consider turning the heat on more..
3) well, winters of 2012 I didn't practice this much before I joined GMC in February 2013. I think around 20-25 minutes or so. Now I practice 1-2 hours (without counting the breaks in between, total time) a day because uni's off till next semester. During uni, I practice 30 minutes to an hour a day.
4) I love legato, and it always hurts me, but it hurts a lot less now, A LOT less. The day I joined GMC, I jumed on to Ben's Land of Legato and all of the skin on my middle finger was slashed and it came off and it bled a lot. Now it doesn't hurt my fingers, it only strains my hands, especially when doing it fingers stretched.

This post has been edited by sammetal92: Jan 14 2014, 07:25 PM

Todd here Some great advice in these posts! Just to add a bit

*Always warmup with some light stretches and slow playing/drills. 5 or 10 minutes should be plenty

*Cool down as well. Eg. Light stretches at the end and maybe even use an ice cube or frozen peas for about 5 minutes on your forearems to reduce any tissue swelling after a vigorous session.

Now on to the fun bits!!! I know exactly the feeling you are talking about. I used to get it myself specifically on the pinky and at that point I could no longer fret scales properly using my pinky or do legato. It would just fail to respond or even bend backward and be painful.

I'd suggest trying to incorporate a bit more "thumbless" practice if possible. It will reduce the stress/pressure on your fingers. Your pinky is the weakest and most prone to over work and failure. When playing fast, the hand tends to tense up. Removing the thumb from the neck helps reset the hands pressure.

You are trying to find the minimum amount of pressure/tension needed to fret the note in the way you want. Finding this point of minimum exertion will allow you to play longer/more/etc. The thumb is really just a guide for the hand. But instinctually it creates over pressure on the hand during exertion like stamina/speed runs/drills etc. So pull the thumb out of the equation for a bit

Todd

I think you're dealing with the amount of "enough" strength for both right and left hands.

I'd suggest take warmups as an exercise that tries the adapt the lowest force on the left hand (very similar to Todd's advice). You'll warmup automaticly but the goal is to adapt the perfect touch which takes lots of practice, sort of like kung-fu masters still praticing the basic punch move while they are 90 years old

As for right hand, to me we all should adapt to at least 2 techniques. For example I use the wrist for stuff that needs high control like string skipping but when doing scale like runs in fast speed I do something very similar or almost the same that Ben talks about here;



So before you work on your brain to adapt new moves, basically start with your body to work in full potential.

As for the cold or burn thing, I also think its a bloodflow thing...turn the heat until your hands don't feel cold when you touch your face if you do, decrease smoking. These should help I hope

Also a warning, if you don't do the warmup thing sooner or later you'll get carpal tunnel syndrome

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpal_tunnel_syndrome

This post has been edited by Mertay: Jan 14 2014, 08:50 PM

Wow, I never ever thought of these things before, and I never came across them either, thanks so much for all that information, I'll incorporate that from my next practice session And yep, the thumbless practice makes sense, but it'd probably feel weird, at first anyway but I think it can really help



Thanks for the video, mate, it seems like I've heard and seen those two things in the video but Ben just taught me how to combine the two together that is, how to pick and how to place my hand I originally got the hand placement tip from Martin Goulding's video here:



And the picking style from Pebber Brown, he calls it sarod picking, but I didn't adopt the technique because I thought that'd be too out of control. Now after seeing Ben pick in that much detail, I can probably take the time to adopt that picking technique



And yeah my blood is warm, but its pretty thick too, so it takes time to get flowing properly

Oh crap, CTS looks pretty bad..

If you've gone from a 1/2 hour to 1 and a half to 2 hours then yeah, you'll have some pain.
And man you gotta warm up or eventually you will hurt yourself ... hurt as in not get better hurt.

*Your hand in the vid looks fine - nice vibrato by the way.

Yeah, CTS is LAME!!!!! I had it in both arms and had to wear immobilizing braces for six months. it was just a nightmare as I couldn't play guitar the entire time So yeah WARM UP!!!!

Some great advice in this thread Follow all these tips and you should be good to go!!!

Todd

Thanks for the great advice everyone And yeah I did get into a lot of more practice and playing since I joined GMC it just wasn't boring anymore, I look forward to it now every day will warm up properly now before playing/practicing, CTS looks baaadddd



thanks, when I came here, I had no vibrato at all, Ben and Gabriel programmed all that into me, I just polished it a bit

10 minutes of warm-up is fine (more is better, but ... ). Just some scales, arpeggios and a few stretchy chords and you'll be good to go.

*I'm 51 and I only have very, very minimal repetitive use syndrome. Mostly it's from standing up with a guitar around my neck for about 38 years. I'm actually pretty lucky. I know some guys that have a lot of problems.

Hey Sam Got a magical one for ya - try it out and let me know how it feels:



I've been using it almost daily and it makes my hands feel great

Oh my, it works I've never ever thought of this before! My hands and palms do feel very warmed up after like 5 or 6 minutes But the weather's pretty cold right now, and the tips of my fingers are still a bit cold after the massage, even though they're a lot warmer than a few minutes ago I think its stimulating expansion and contraction of the muscles that's why it works so amazingly

You know, if it's only been happening for 4 days, there a chance that it'll go away in a few days too. Sometimes weird thins happen like that, I've had a few times where pain has put me out for a few days.

I haven't seen this great video before mate. I will definitely incorporate this warm up for live gigs when I'm backstage and I don't have my guitar with me.

So to sumarize Sam, warming up, stretching, massages, pre and post guitar session are very important. And also trying to avoid extra strength, pressure and tension. Warm up and relax.

Yeah but better safe than sorry



Yes sir!

Surprise, surprise I had the same feeling when someone here taught me this technique and I literally felt its effect immediately after it was executed. Use it wisely and take the time to do it before every practice session I think you should gather all the suggestions in this thread and come up with your own warm up routine, based on all of these!

Thanks Gabe! Hope you'll incorporate it in your warm up routine as well

This post has been edited by Cosmin Lupu: Jan 17 2014, 08:58 AM

Well, this is what I've been doing since the last two days (I've used a stop watch to approximately calculate how much time I spend on warm up ):

1. Did the massage you told me. (approx. 4 minutes)
2. Did thumbless (as Todd advised) chromatic runs starting from the 5th fret low E string, and ending at the 12th fret high E and then reverse (once only). (approx. 3 minutes)
3. Did Andy James' warm up from here to a metronome to stretch my fingers: http://andyjamesguitaracademy.com/launch-page-1/ and PDF tab: http://andyjamesguitaracademy.com/wp-conte..._Warming_Up.pdf (approx. 3 minutes)

So, in 10 minutes, I'm all ready to rip it out on the guitar its been working great, I've seen improvement in my stamina and speed.

Also, any new lick/exercise I want to play, after etching it on my muscle memory, I play it a few times thumbless to a metronome and I get a feel of how much pressure I need to put (and not too much) on the strings to make the notes sound, and it helps me build speed when I use my thumb again

Maybe someone else would like to try all this for once and tell me how it feels Thank you everyone