I chose to write about this topic this month because I am actually recovering from a pretty bad hand injury that I sustained over a month ago. The actual injury was a result of a combination of things but it has given me a very good reason to remember the importance of warming up before playing and practicing because, due to my injury, I have not been able to play my guitar for over a month! Not cool to say the least.

I’ll first give you a quick recap on what happened and then I talk about some exercises and warm up routines that you can do to prevent injury. I recently started working on writing a new song that was very technical and fast. Although I play a lot of this kind of music, I have not been keeping up on it lately because I have been busy working on other things. I also got into indoor rock climbing over the summer. On one particular day about a month ago, I was working on writing for about a four hour stretch, then I went in to teach for about another four hours. To top the day off, I then went climbing that evening for the third time in a one week span. I knew that I was pushing it but I wasn’t really feeling any serious pain so I moved through the day without much caution. The next couple days however I started feeling some serious sharp pain in my left hand and wrist. I knew that it was a combination of too much technical playing and rock climbing in a very short time span. Rock climbing, by the way, is extremely hard on your hands and fingers, not the best activity to be involved in if your a guitar player. The pain continued and only got worse when I taught and played guitar. After a couple weeks of this constant pain, I paid a visit to my doctor. He basically told me that there shouldn’t be any long term damage and that I probably just inflamed some tendons in my hand and wrist. He told me to ice it when it gets sore, to take Aleve to reduce the inflammation, and to stay off of it as much as possible. Fat chance of that happening! It’s been a little over a month now and it is feeling much better. I’m still not 100% but I can play and practice pretty regularly without much discomfort.

Now lets talk about Good Pain and Bad Pain Read the rest of this entry