If you have not had a guitar-related injury of
some sort, you probably know someone who
has. Your wrist? My shoulder! Oh, my aching
back. Ice it. Put some heat on it. Rest it. Use
it. Stretch it. Ah, the athleticism of being a
guitarist. Around final exam time in the Guitar
Department at Berklee, those volar wrist splints
start to look like a fashion trend. The power of
observation and awareness of your technique
can save you from injury, as can careful and
deliberate warm-ups, stretches, and rest.
Most of the muscle strain I’ve experienced in
my hand came from my early days of practicing
bebop heads, searching for the melodies
and memorizing patterns that my left hand
had never been asked to do before. Finding
new and interesting chord voicings added to
that tugging and pulling on the pinky side of
my hand. When it got so I could aggravate my
hand simply by a slight turn of a steering wheel
or by pulling up a blanket at night, I knew I
had to get some rest—and advice. I visited
my friend, guitarist, and teacher, Rich Falco, of
Worcester, Massachusetts. He gave me some
great stretches to try, and admonished me to
use my right hand to carry my amp if my left
hand was hurting, for heaven’s sake.
First stretching lesson: Open your hand wide,
making space between each finger very slowly,
then hold it. Close your hand into a gentle fist
and hold that. Do that several times, as often
as you think of it throughout the day. It’s a
convenient stretch—no guitar necessary. I do
it on my way to gigs in the car, while walking,
and any time I have a moment to sit and relax.
After many years of playing my full-sized jazz
box on gigs, I recently decided to try using
my 3/4-sized jazz guitar, which I had only been
using for teaching to that point. Since I had
been having some shoulder trouble for the past
two years, I thought downsizing might be worth
a try. Throughout the set, I noticed the funny
little way my left shoulder would shoot up and
out and around, as if it were trying to help my
arm reach around some giant structure to allow
my fingers to land on the strings. Once I adjusted,
I began to wonder if I had been unnecessarily
flailing about on my larger guitar for
years and never bothered to notice. I preach
economy of movement to my students—had I
not practiced it in my own playing?
I turned to Katherine Riggert, D.O., a sports-medicine
specialist at UMass Memorial in
central Massachusetts (who, by the way, lives
with her guitar-playing husband and all of
his guitars). We shared a few dos and don’ts,
confirming the validity of the stretches I’ve
been doing for myself—and teaching my students—
since my meeting with Rich Falco.
“I consider musicians a type of athlete,” says
Dr. Riggert. “You have to develop good habits.
If you want to play guitar for a long time, you
have to develop good form, or you’ll develop
overuse injuries.” She encourages us to consider
the whole body rather than just the fingers when
assessing our guitar playing habits. What affects
the elbow, affects the wrist, affects the hand.
We fall into the position of doing whatever it
takes to get the sound out sometimes. “If you’re
not paying attention to your posture, that can
lead you to rely on how you hold your wrist.”
Standing with a strap that is adjusted too low,
for example, can lead to over-flexion—or bending
too much inward—in the wrist. Posture
problems and the weight of the guitar can lead
to “degenerative joint disease in the neck,
which itself can cause problems in the hand.”
Dr. Riggert cautions: “Before stretching, get
some circulation going in your hand. You
shouldn’t stretch a cold muscle.” She recommends
an assisted stretch with your other
hand helping. Very gently and slowly bend
each finger back and hold for a few seconds.
Then hold all four fingers back together. You
can also use a table to facilitate the stretch—
try it palm up and palm down with your
fingers on the edge of the table. Dr. Riggert
also recommends shoulder shrugs and a
gentle neck roll before performances.
I get all of my students to join me in a meditative
warm-up using the guitar (note: not a tennis
ball, or any other sort of hard-to-squeeze
device). Start with your first finger on the
fifth fret of the high E string. Hold it for four
long beats, then add your second finger to
the sixth fret. Hold each finger down this way
until all four fingers are down, separated at
each fret, pointing in a parallel direction to
the frets. Repeat on each string and take your
time—feel the gentle pull.
If it’s too late for prevention and you’re dealing
with discomfort or injury, but you can’t
cancel an upcoming performance, you may
have to find ways to recover while still playing.
“There’s rest and then there’s relative
rest,” Dr. Riggert points out. “Relative rest
is something you can do early on when you
sense an injury coming, so you cut back your
practice time and take lots of breaks.”
Complete rest, however, may be what’s necessary
until symptoms resolve. “It’s easier to
treat overuse injuries early on in the process.
Tendonitis can take years to resolve. Chronic
tendonitis, or tendonosis, is a disorganization
of the tendons rather than an inflammation,
and that is much harder to treat.”
To make a safe return to playing, Dr. Riggert
recommends a gradual approach, with rest
breaks and rest days. Use the time to “figure
out what happened in the first place. It’s
gradual. That’s how it has to be. That’s the
frustrating part.”
Jane Miller
Jane Miller is a guitarist, composer, and arranger
with roots in both jazz and folk. In addition to leading
her own jazz instrumental quartet, she is in a
working chamber jazz trio with saxophonist Cercie
Miller and bassist David Clark. The Jane Miller Group
has released three CDs on Jane’s label, Pink Bubble
Records. Jane joined the Guitar Department faculty at
Berklee College of Music in 1994.
janemillergroup.com
