Get better at playing AND stay away from injuries.
The Guitar.
Acoustic can transport you to Americana roots you didn’t know you had, and electric can bring you energy levels not even a Bang energy drink can compete with. An instrument that can fill your soul when everything else is missing.
But it can also fill you with pain. Chances are, if you play the guitar, you’re going to get injured, if you’re not already. Many studies conclusively agree that upwards of 80% of musicians will be injured, and guitarists have some of the highest rates. Acoustic players seem to fare even worse than their electric counterparts. Either way, you’re twice as likely to have a shoulder, elbow, or wrist problem than people who don’t strum away their struggles.
The worst part is, these injuries creep up on you. It’s easy for your normal to shift without realizing it, until it becomes too late. It’s not like you took a rough hit on the football field and now you feel it. It starts little. A bit tender. Then that grows to achy. Then that grows to actual pain. Then you’re playing through pain that affects your playing. But, you’re not going to stop, because it’s what fills your soul. Most musical injuries are chronic overuse, repetitive motion type injuries.
So now what?
This quick read article probably won’t solve your specific problem, but it should at least be a starting point to either stave off future injuries or find some solutions if you have one now.
The root cause is the most important factor to find. And, it’s not usually where you feel pain right now. Take Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) for instance, a guitar player killer. CTS has a 50% surgical failure rate, often because it doesn’t fix the root problem. Surgery goes after the symptom - pain in the hand. (For an in depth read, check out our Carpal Tunnel blog here.) The root cause is usually movement-based. How you’re holding your guitar, how you’re strumming, how your body is positioned, how well or not did you warm up or recover from your playing session. Pain tells you something is happening, it doesn’t tell you WHAT or always WHERE. Pain is like a shaky steering wheel. You wouldn’t just replace the steering wheel (hello typical CTS surgery), you’d look at your car’s alignment, tire wear, struts, that kind of thing.
Mirror Athletes
To keep yourself in good condition, we’re going to mirror athletes for a bit, but tailor it to your musical life. The first important thing is to warm up. If sports make you cringe, hold up, we’re not saying you need to do calisthenics before you pick up your guitar. A warm up for anyone consists of three things.
Raising muscle temperature, blood flow, etc.
Activating key muscles and nerves.
Performing performance-relevant movements.
You’ll notice the warm up doesn’t list “Strumming, strumming, strumming!” This is where musicians get things really wrong. A warm up isn’t performing, you shouldn’t be doing your “performance activity” (aka playing your guitar or bass) as a warm up.
Let’s break it down even further.
Raising muscle temp.
This is actually super easy. You take your left hand, and you rub your right arm from wrist to shoulder, top and bottom until it warms up. Then take your right arm and do the same to your left arm. Done. If you have a Theragun/Hypervolt massage gun, you can use that really quickly, too. This should take about a minute or two per arm.
Activating key muscles and nerves.
What this means is we want to remind the brain that all of these shoulder, forearm, and hand muscles exist. Believe or not, your brain can actually “forget” them, and then you end up over-muscling your way through your session. Never play an instrument if your arms feel “heavy.” Some quick and simple exercises are shoulder circles, elbow circles, wrist circles and figure 8s, and finger waves and circles, along with some gentle resistance from your other hand and arm. This might take 5 minutes.
Performance-relevant movements.
This is where you actually pick up your guitar and get ready. But you’re not fully playing, you’re seeing how your body feels, and adjusting to more neutral positions or working on stability and better posture. A few minutes here, and you’re good to go.
That’s a guitar playing warm up. Maybe 10 minutes, and you should feel light, ready, and “connected” to your instrument more. Now you get to fill your soul with playing.
Back to the athlete cadence. Professional athletes warm up, train/perform, and then recover in multiple cycles. There’s a micro cycle for an event, but then throughout the week, they have a warm up, train and recover cadence that is missing from the music world. And the injury rates show it. In sports, there’s a <15% injury rate versus music’s 80-90% injury rate.
During the week, you need to do body recovery exercises and strength and mobility exercises. If a gym makes you nauseous, don’t worry, it’s not about the gym. It’s about your body getting used to the stress you want to put on it in a performance environment - meaning wherever you play you should train.
What does recovery look like? It’s self massage or using some external tools, like the massage guns, to keep your muscles and nerves limber and flexible and taking some of that tension out before it builds up and becomes an issue. It’s mobility drills, like the ones you did in the warm up, but more intentional and more in depth. Recovery can also be using tools like Normatec compression arm sleeves. Red light therapy for cellular health. Saunas! And just good ol’ rest. Take a day or two off from playing.
Keep strumming away, and implement some of these tips. Experiment to see what makes your body feel better and what improves your playing.