wrist & hand fatigue

Personally, I wouldn't be punching anything. It leads to calcium build ups in the joints from what my doctor told me, reducing dexterity further. Tingling in the finger tips and a loss of sensation, however small, screams RSI to me, but if you have been diagnosed negatively, I'd say go for further tests. My cousin once was sure that he'd developed some muscle-wasting syndrome, even went for an MRI scan, only to realise he'd been playing too much Call of Duty on XBOX 360....

Cheers,
Sam

I switched from a mouse to a trackball (Logitech M570) and my wrist definitely complains a lot less. Downside is you lose a bit of precision, but that's more of an issue for gaming than DAW work.

Glucosamine works well for tendon and ligament troubles.

I deal with this every day by profession.
Can't offer an opinion by a distance, but I'd say it's a good thing you're reacting positively.
I'd also tend to disregard the punching-ball's contribution to the perceived improvement in a direct sense, most probably it's just exercising in itself which helps you.

Too bad you don't read Italian (do you?), I've written a book addressed at guitar players but it has been published in Italian only.
I'm currently writing a second one which I hope to publish in English as well, but it will take some time.

There would really be other things I'd be able to tell you if we were in personal touch but, as a general consideration, it's good you're reacting well.

Anyway, should things take a different route, feel free to PM me: we'll think of something

Best wishes dude

Computer keyboard placement makes a big difference - I like mine mounted on a shelf below the top of the desk. Also, guitar strap length can be changed to take tension off of your wrists.

I get swollen tendons along the ulna where it joins the wrist. Started a few years ago and prevents me playing anywhere near as much as I used to or would like to. If I play for more than an hour a day or particularly if I practise legato exercises, it swells again and hurts for days. I've had this checked in the local hospital and had x-rays and ultra-sound scans, which showed that 'there were some changes in the tendons'. However, the doctors have given me no idea how to deal with it or how to help it get better! So, basically I just have to manage it as best I can and as with the OP stretch - the hand in particular. This seems to help a little. Icing it and anti-inflammatories have no noticeable effect at all. I already have my guitar strap pretty short to lesson stress on the wrist, but don't really know what else to do.

hi. here's my cents. I have been strugling with tendonities for years thus I had to become an expert in dealing with them. true is the fact that not everybody that has them do have them for the same cause. but what I'm about to write can give you a clue on things you might want to consider.

facts:
- I used to play up to 10 hours a day, sometimes more.
- tendonities were all at the fretboard wrist
- they alway stroke the tendons right before the hand attaches to the wrist.
- sometimes they were located in other parts of the same fretboard hand.
- 95% of the times tendonities are cause but the excessive striking of the fretboard hand fingers to the fretboard itself.

remedies I did:
- Always warm up for at least 10 minutes with EXCLUSIVELY alternate picking excercises
- before playing do a swedish bath (don't know iof this is called this way but it is the hto/cold alternate water application) on the fretboard wrist, doing it by bathing it alternatively with super hot (almost irresistable) water and ice cold water, let's say 10 seconds each, repeating the thing for something like 5 minutes
- do some work out to make the wrist stronger.

a comment on all of the 3 remedies.

the first came after a study I made which lasted several months. I used to be a guitar teacher (still am) at full time and had literally thousand of students. after countless hours of testing I determined that the best way to warm up the wrist/hand is by performing an exercise which allow the hand to move with the least effort possible. clearly legato and tapping (which is a sort of legato + a tap) are the worst scenario you can be on. sweep picking is not good as well. found out that alternate picking exercises are the absolutely best. this is because alternate picking is a very difficult technique and a very short percentage of players can do it as it is supposed to be done. since it is a coordinated technique, whoever tries it is forced to go very slow to attempt it. in addition, the force of the note (meaning the volume of each picked note) is done by striking with the pick as opposed to legato in which generally speaking each note have its volume by the left hand fingers as they strike the fretboard.
as said in the fourth statement of the facts, most of the times guitar players tendonities are cause by the vibration coming from excesssive force with the hammering fingers. so, if you avoid too much force hammering it'll be a nice way to start. alternate picking exercise are the very best for this. you can simply do a chromatic quadruplet on all the strings, like if you start at the nineth fret with your index finger, the next notes are at the 10th, 11th and 12th. then the same in the a string, d string and so on.

second statement of the remedies works very well and can be done at will all the times. it serves to enhance blood circulation on the bathing point. do it and you can feel an immediate easing of the hand movement. try it and let me know.

third is what got me the most dramatic improvement.
first off, there is no working out in the gym to reinforce the tendons which are not muscles. nevertheless if you reinforce your wrist as a Whole you can better fight against tendonities. you can start by using small weights and slowly moving up and down the wrist, moving to heavier weights in due time. if you get your wrist strong and I wouold say very strong, I assure you you will have much less tendonities cases on your side.
a note: I don't mean you should become a gym rambo to better deal with tendonities. all I'm saying is that you have to have muscolarily stronger wrists to deal with wrist issues.
before you or other comment of the myth that working out slows the palying hands, it is totally a myth which I myself busted. as a matter of fact I do as work out gymnastic things like handstands and so on which load to the wrist not less than 40 kg, sometimes even 80 kg when I do one hand handstand.
so you can imagine that my writs are pretty much exposed to high load in perpendicular position (imagine my hands in the floor and the arm/body perpendicular).

of course I don't overstress my wrist whil working out. but I never had tendonities since years all ready.

one last thing: the remedies were not tested by me as a guinea pig. I tested them with dozens of guitar players with a 100% success except for those cases in which the problem resided in different location.

in fact I had a case in which a student of mine had a wrist tendonities which were impossible to get rid of. we found out the issue was located not in the wrist but on the scapula, which being a bit bent, was touching a tendon in the shoulder, which inflammed some forearm tendon and all the way to the wrist which was aching. this case was solved by just adjust the scapula. but this are very rare cases.

hope this helps

michael

I've been thinking about this a lot and maybe I have some advice for you (no chronological order, just some thoughts). I hope I use the correct terms to explain what I mean as I'm no native speaker.

1. When you pick up your guitar start with something easy.
2. Think about what John Petrucci calls "economy of motion". Ask yourself if a certain movement is really necessary and how you can optimize it.
3. Keep your fingers parallel to the frets.
4. Don't lift up your fingers too far from the fretboard. Let them float upon the strings as close as possible.
5. Watch your fretting strength. Only very little strength is really needed to fret a note.
6. Watch the movement and the really needed strength of your fretting hand's thumb.
7. Experiment with the position of your fretting hand's thumb.
8. Make short breaks. Think of something completely different during this time. Shake both hands and arms extensively.
9. Experiment with the strap length. Watch the angle of your picking hand and your elbow.
10. Raise the neck more against your head when playing the lower frets next to the saddle.
11. Be aware that muscles and tendons are involved a lot when playing guitar. They need to be trained just like if you were a sportsman. Therefore it is ok if it hurts a bit when practicing. It must be a little stressful in order to make progress. But keep the effort and the resulting pain short. Shake hands and arms after this.
12. Practice in front of a mirror and watch your movements.
13. Practice stressful things over and over (each day, but only one or two times a day). It gets better with time, believe me.
14. Watch your body posture.
15. Practice to a click. Start slow (around 70-80 bpm, even if you play only quarter notes) and increase the tempo by steps of 5 bpm. Play very, very accurate in slow tempos. This will help you to play accurate in faster tempos.
16. Stay concentrated.
17. Play something easy after playing something stressful.
18. Noodle around to a click. Play whatever comes to your mind. It is not that important that everything fits together perfect. When time goes by it will fit together by itself without thinking about it too much.
19. It is important to start again if you made a mistake or played sloppy. But it is also important to continue playing if you made a mistake, because you must be able to play forth in a live situation.
20. Think and watch all the time when practicing something hard but let yourself go when noodling around or playing something easy.
21. The picking hand is as important as the fretting hand. Both hands need to be trained.
22. Experiment with the way you hold your pick (strength and position). Little changes can have a huge impact.
23. Have fun even if you play something boring. Play the boring things as musical as you can (watch Malcolm Young) and you'll get your satisfaction by playing them.
24. Don't ever think about quitting to play guitar.

Here are two links that might help you too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSrfB7JIzxY
http://www.thomann.de/de/planet_waves_varigrip.htm

Good luck!

Hey Michael,

I'd be very intersted in getting to know more about your experience, it seems you've worked on a lot of cases which makes it meaningful somehow.

Just two notes:

Actually, the best possible warm-up comes from a combination of free-body and technical movements. The difference Vs. a guitar-only warm-up is clearly perceivable, and warming-up time is definitely shortened down.

There's some truth in the idea that *some* kinds of phisical training do no good to a musician. It all depends on the person, the nature of the exercises and the amount/density of the training.

If/when

1. training involves muscles of the hand/forearm which are supposed to react fast
2. this involvement is based on static contractions requiring a (relative) meaningful amount of strenght
3. the subject tends to develop a static kind of strenght/muscular volume
4. the training is such that meaningful results are achieved as per the above
5. the subject does nothing to compensate for this tendency, which is largely subjective

then you can perceive a clear correlation to the loss of some music-related performance abilities.

I hope we'll be able to share some experiences in the next future

Hi Gianfranco........sure thing! (cosa sicura!). you can either pm or email me at [email protected]

I'm located in Firenze, anyway.

michael

When I'm back we'll manage it somehow. Do you ever plan to go to Rome for any reason in the future?

In the meanwhile you might be interested in visiting http://www.virtuosissimo.com, and/or to grab a copy of The Very Best Of Body Guitaring

really great, in depth replies here. I for one appreciate it a lot and will follow this advice and see if it helps:)

Gimko? So, in Italian, "microcircolo". Che ne pensi Gianfranco?

f.

Mhhh... As a nutritionist and a personal trainer, I tend to not use, prescribe or advise about such substances.

Like jinseng, coffeine and the like it's a stimulating molecula, whose action lasts as long as the blood concentration is high: since they're not able to induce a steady modification either in the tissues' metabolism or phisiology, they are not actually improving your abilities, but act like a drug (doping). The effect is based on different actions, but it would be a bit like drinking 7-8 coffees in order to feel more active or productive: not something you might want to do on a regular basis.
Besides all, the class of moleculas stimulating hormons (like adrenaline, noradrenaline) tend to stress the body on the long run, like any exciting substance.

I don't think ginko biloba would hurt a health person if seldomly taken (say once every several weeks), it's just that it's not able to actually improve performance or health, like other products can do.

Quote from waraba

started typing on a computer keyboard ( if you can call a ZX81 a keyboard LOL) by the age of 11

Ah, funny!

The first "micro" computer I have ever touched was an Osborne 1 and I was hooked...

The first computer I bought was a Sinclair ZX81 in 1981 and was 11 also. I paid for it by cleaning up my room and passing the vacuum in the house when I was a kid.
Needless to say that no one, even my parents, knew WTF I would be doing with that thing.

I still have the ZX81 actually with the 16KB add-on.
I thought that I could never use all that memory space at the time...

As far as the punching bag goes, I would avoid it... It's a pretty violent warmup let's just say.

Cheers,

Marc.

Quote from viabcroce

Mhhh... As a nutritionist and a personal trainer, I tend to not use, prescribe or advise about such substances.

Like jinseng, coffeine and the like it's a stimulating molecula, whose action lasts as long as the blood concentration is high: since they're not able to induce a steady modification either in the tissues' metabolism or phisiology, they are not actually improving your abilities, but act like a drug (doping). The effect is based on different actions, but it would be a bit like drinking 7-8 coffees in order to feel more active or productive: not something you might want to do on a regular basis.
Besides all, the class of moleculas stimulating hormons (like adrenaline, noradrenaline) tend to stress the body on the long run, like any exciting substance.

I don't think ginko biloba would hurt a health person if seldomly taken (say once every several weeks), it's just that it's not able to actually improve performance or health, like other products can do.

totally agree with Gianfranco. I'm a nutritionist and trainer myself and, apart the first years of tendonities in which I didn't know how to handle them, I never used pain killers or similar. the simple reason is that they turn off the only alarm I have to figure out a solution: the pain. pain is an alarm from the body that requests an investigation. if I turn it off there won't be no way to know what worked and what didn't.

clearly, if I have to do something and need to stay painless, then, but only in case of emergency, I can kill the pain.

anyways.....as said, in my experience the most majority of the tendonities were caused by the vibration of the hammering fingers on the fretboard. more strenght = more vibration =more danger of hurting the tendons.

so a guitar player should really learn that no matter how strong he/she hammers the frets, when the max volume is achieved, all the unnecessary strenght will cause excessive vibration that will be spread along the fingers.

similar things happen when you run: impact vibration, this time on the ground. similar with tennis (as a matter of fact most tennis rackets have the so called vibrastop to dissipate the ball/racket impact).

so, fisrt thing for me was to learn to play with less strenght in hammering when playing legato and tapping. speed, agility and finger stretch while playing never got me to tendonities. this is why I always advice to use alternate picking licks to warmp up, because the note strenght is given not by hammering but by picking.

michael

Wow, disn't know we were colleagues

We should definitely try and spend some time in front of some beers... And/or some profiles

Anyway, enough with the wiKPA... I think I'm going to get a brand new signature

Medical data hints at Ginkgo having a positive/prophylactic influence towards the development of dementia so there's very likely more to it than only being a caffeine- alike.