Hi Roman, welcome back.. I'm glad your shoulder surgery went well !
Ok, well this is definitely a good workout for your fretting hand so let's approach it with caution but you can definitely do this with a bit of patience..
Before playing anything at all, always make sure that you've got good blood flow in your hands and that they are able to move freely without feeling sluggish. When you flex and unflex your fingers, check that they don't feel crampy as that's a sign that they're still cold.
If they feel warm enough, just begin with a few basic chords like Am, D, G, E just to get the finger muscles working before we tackle the bigger shapes.
Ok..
What I did when I was trying to get better at the shapes was to fret them and then just keep repeating them until my hand started to feel too tense and like my fingers and hand were burning. For example, I would fret one of the bigger chords and repeat the arpeggios maybe 10 times or so, until it started to burn..
I would then (gently) take them off the fretboard and slowly allow my fingers to come back in to a resting position. It's important not to go immediately from a very stretched position to a sudden closed hand position because your tendons have just been stretched and fast movements can hurt it even more while it is in that state. So, take it slow
Have a rest for a little while, let your hand sit naturally and try not to keep messing with it etc..
Time for another set of repetitions. Repeat. When you play the chord, try to look at each finger and check that they're in the right position. If they're not quite fretting the note, try as much as you can to adjust them to the best of your ability. It will take effort and it won't take long until they're burning and asking you to stop. It's ok to feel the burn, but stop if you feel sharp pain.
I would go through this sequence about 3 times in total.. that should be enough for your hand in one day when it comes to stretching its reaching potential.
What we're trying to do is to gradually introduce your hands to bigger stretches in a way that allows them to build up stamina naturally and not pushing them too quickly.
At first, you won't be able to do many reps before you feel the need to stop. Over a few days, you will be able to increase the amount of time you can stay on that shape as your finger muscles and tendons become used to the stretch.
When you can fret the shapes ok, then you'll have to put them together and the changes between the chords are another challenge in themselves but until then, the challenge is to get your fretting hand up to fitness
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This post has been edited by Ben Higgins: Mar 13 2012, 10:26 AM