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wrist pains


jameswithesg

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have got to be a guitarist's nightmare,

 

i've had some minor pains lately in my fretting hand (left), its not too bad, not really a sharp pain, and its not preventing me from playing or anything

 

but the pain is there,

 

 

has anybody else experienced bad wrist pain? what do you do about it?

 

 

if i lost the ability to play the guitar or mando, i think i might commit suicide

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have got to be a guitarist's nightmare' date='

 

i've had some minor pains lately in my fretting hand (left), its not too bad, not really a sharp pain, and its not preventing me from playing or anything

 

but the pain is there,

 

 

has anybody else experienced bad wrist pain? what do you do about it?

 

 

if i lost the ability to play the guitar or mando, i think i might commit suicide[/quote']

 

You have to switch to the right hand for ...um....er......ah....nevermind!

 

I sometimes get "stiffness" in my fretting hand, which requires me to take a couple of asprin before playing. You should probably check with a doctor to make sure you're not getting arthritis or something.

 

Bob

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For me three surgeries on the right hand and two on the left so far. pain is a indicator that something isn't right numbness means you ignored the pain for too long. The location says allot about what's going on the Carpal nerve affects the thumb and two nearest fingers while the Radial nerve is the outside of the hand and the pinky. they split the ring finger right down the middle which is a weird feeling all on it's own but severe nerve like Carpal doesn't just ache at least for me it feels like a ice pick or electrocution and it wakes me up 4-5 times a night to run warm water on the hands until the feeling comes back.

 

Good Luck

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i try to stretch before i play, i suppose i should make a point of it,

 

it started and got worse over 3 or 4 days, and it kind of went away, ive been trying not to stress it,

 

im thinking i hurt it doing something else, if it persists i probably will visit the doctor just incase

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Just a thought here, but looking at your instruments, I'm wondering about how you hold them when playing. If the wrist in angled other than pretty much "straight" , it can do some nasty things in some bodies.

 

My "mousing" with the right hand when I was doing a lotta graphics actually hurt long term a lot more than some dumb martial arts stuff I've done with my poor innocent wrists. Ditto angles on keyboards when I've been banging on them more than 8-10 hours a day for a cupla weeks at a time.

 

I'm betting you're angling your wrist(s) in a stressful way. One thing I've liked about a relatively "classical" hold on the guitar is that it seems to bring less long term stress to the hands. There are similar "holds" from other styles where the thumb wraps to the bass strings.

 

But in both the above, the wrist itself is pretty much straight line from the elbow to the two large knuckles viewed from below. There's an "inward bow" but not anything moving those first two knuckles out of line.

 

A lot of martial arts do wrist locks that do by intent what it appears you're doing by accident... Having resembled that remark... <grin>

 

Just a thought.

 

m

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well i've benn playing the guitar for 6 to 8 years maybe, and over time i've developed the clutch around the neck with the straight wrist that is comfortable and i can play all night

 

but the mandolin on the other hand is a different story, been playing it for aboout 2 years

 

 

it hasn't ever bothered me before, i'm just gonna take it easy on the wrist for a few days and keep paying attention to it

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Well....

 

I used to break a lot of boards, too, in martial arts practice. One technique was with the back of the wrist. When I started breaking around 3-4 inches of pine 1 x 12 wood cut at 12 inches with the back of the wrist three or four times a week, I started to have a bit of consistent pain at the wrist tendons.

 

But...

 

It hurt far less than the repetitive movement of a computer mouse doing a lot of graphics and graphic design work on the computer and having my wrist do a lot of travel to the right and left even though it did not leave a plane with the forearm bones. I have consistent swelling at the right side of my wrist from the computer - not the board breaking.

 

That should tell a bit of a story. I think it's the constant repetition of small kinesiological incorrect movement that is the real potential problem for long term pain.

 

m

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I had wrist pain too, which I thought was due to tendonitis in the wrist. I put ice on it every day, between the thumb and index finger. I had the right idea but it was in the wrong place. It turned out to be minor tennis elbow and the pain was shooting down my arm to my wrist. Th easy way to check for this is to jam you thumb into the top part of the tendon, below the elbow. When I first did this, it hurt like hell. So I started icing that area. It's much better now (took about a month). You really want to work the ice in there though...

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I did have tendinitis in my left hand/wrist 2 years ago.

Whatever I tried, nothing helped. I could hardly play.

Doctor gave me a shot of cortison and after 4 days I was good as new. Never came back.

(Knock on wood!)

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