How much tension is too much?

Playing Technique
#1

In applying the concept, that finding the correct technique involves test driving at higher speeds to see what works. I am assuming it’s natural to experience some degree of arm tension?

For me, especially when using an elbow picking technique I very quickly start flexing the bicep in an attempt to power through and force more speed. Actually ends up slowing me down.

I have found a few different variations that I can do a reasonable speed at. But there’s always tension somewhere. Most commonly the forearm muscle near the elbow. Fatigues quite quickly.

So my questions are… at what point should I stop and take a break? How do we build endurance with the goal of faster over longer time periods?

I’ve read in the past that too much tension can have various adverse consequences. Such as, it becoming a habitual part of your playing, joint issues (stuff like tennis elbow) and of course tension ultimately slows things down, which is not the goal.

Curious to hear everyone’s thoughts as to how you deal with this.

Thanks folks!!

#2

The moment this happens, you need to stop, because you’re just learning how to power through it, and not avoid it.

There is going to be a certain degree of tension, or “activation”, in your muscles, but I believe it’s a natural, flowing thing that ricochets between antagonistic muscle groups when everything is working correctly, or that just results in everything feeling “activated”. I’m a pretty good picker, but not consistently, and certainly not as strong as some other forum members yet. Perhaps they can chime in on their physical state.

If things start to accumulate, that’s when problems happen. Your muscles are fighting against each other.

It’s possible that you’re tensing too hard, trying to hard to make things happen.

To deal with it, the moment I feel it, or am conscious of it, I stop, and shake things out. Or I try to – sometimes the “workhorse” habit kicks in. Since picking muscles and coordination is very fine, the moment things go out of whack or the muscles tire, I believe the body throws extra muscles at it, trying to “get 'er done.” But that’s not real technique, that’s just false technique. So, you have to either get things back in sync, or take a break to let the small muscles recuperate.

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#3

Thanks for the reply. Everything you say makes sense. I tend to be a dangerous combination of heavy handed and impatient. So it’s way easier to learn it the wrong way haha. But I’ll give your suggestions a go. Much appreciated!

#4

I also notice that tension of muscles that don’t really contribute to ‘smooth speed’ when I learn a new technique (I’m presently working through on my third one in terms of alternate picking).

It goes away eventually as your brain learns to drop it for the sake of efficiency. The trick, in my experience, has been to stay aware of it, stop, mid run even, relax the arm and go again. Mix this up with just going for it for at least 1-2 bars at a time. The time it takes to tense up will get longer and longer, then go away. Patience Jedi.

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#5

Tension doesn’t “go away”, it is reduced to a minimal level through efficient movements and then consciously managed from there. It is a skill you have to refine. The above post is not good advice, at all.

You will always have tension in your playing. You have to learn how to control it. Some people play lines in a way where the amount of tension in their body is crippling and a built-in aspect of their technique. Some of these people go onto have successful careers and others go on to permanently cripple themselves.

There’s no way to determine “how much is too much”, that’s an inner-experience the player has to learn and refine over a long period of time. Over time you’ll learn the details of the lines and can modify certain fingerings or pickstrokes or hand placement or whatever to make the lines easier.

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#6

Semantics really. To clarify, if it reduces to the point that you get a better result (doesn’t hold you back to your liking), then the problem of too much tension goes away for the player.

Sounds aggressive. It’s worked for me (anecdotal, I know) but the OP is looking for advice on something I’ve learned to tame (‘too much tension’). The quality of the advice ultimately lies on the outcome of the trial and error of the OP.

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#7

No, it is not semantics. This is you dispensing advice that is categorically incorrect on its face and now you’ve shot yourself in the foot with a modification (not “clarification”) of your original premise that further exposes your lack of understanding of biomechanics and the way the brain absorbs and trains motor information. You went from claiming that tension goes away passively (it does not do this) to now claiming that as long as the player doesn’t feel like they are being held back by tension it ceases to be a potential problem in the eyes of player, which is also false.

Consider that you can be completely satisfied with your sonic quality and playing at speeds that are appropriate for your genre while simultaneously being completely unaware that you possess movement patterns or quirks that over the long haul will result in focal dystonia or RSI or carpal tunnel or whatever. These problems or the risks of these problems do not cease to exist for the player simply because the player wills it to be so as a consequence of artistic preference or personal satisfaction, much in the same way that a parent does not cease to exist in front of a child because the child covers their eyes. These problems, much like reality, will come knocking whether you want them to or not so long as you elect to not abide by certain rules of guitar technique such as tension control and minimization.

The advice you’ve dispensed is potentially harmful, poorly worded, and not concrete enough to be actionable. It will result in anyone taking it to heart with a series of plateaus and stunted technical development. There’d be more dignity in admitting your position here.

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#9

This sounds like “semantics” to me. We’ve got one poster suggesting that relaxation is a skill that needs to be “refined” and another proposing what sounds like a pretty specific method for doing that refinement. I won’t pretend I have the greatest reading comprehension in the world. But these two quoted examples seem to be stating kind of the same thing on the surface.

At the very least, the two points which are being made here are similar enough to not warrant this kind of response. @guitarenthusiast I’ve followed some recent posts and I’ve noticed the emergence of an “I’m gonna school you” type attitude that’s comes off as dismissive. I’d appreciate a more constructive way of disagreeing / discussing without talking down to people. I think we’re all pretty intellctually curious people here, open to being wrong, and interested in the same outcomes here.

Thx.

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#10

Just burst out laughing on a conference call, luckily I was muted.

Sorry Dad, I promise I’ll do better.

#11

Hey @AndrewWhitfield, this is what I do and what I’d recommend as well. It’s easy to implement into your routine and yields results.

Yeah, I hear you, and I’m the same way. I’m about to get all Buddha on you. Luckily, we can use our guitar practice as an experiment in ego-less mindfulness. Our mind/“self”/ego wants to be the best, to really rip, but our higher conscious can mediate. When you practice, and it’s not working, you can stop, and assess. It’s not “you” making the mistakes, it’s not “you” with bad technique, you see? Good practice is about the self-less experimentation and observation of what works and what doesn’t. The frustration, and the willful “pushing through” tension, is the attachment to the goal, and attachment leads to suffering. Seriously :slight_smile: A few tricks to work on this tendency: i) keep your technical practice sessions short, a couple of minutes, so that you can stay in mental control, and don’t get frustrated. ii) Awareness helps. After each rep, failed or successful, mentally review, take stock of what’s up. iii) Maybe practice some mindfulness, if you can!

I’d add to this that you should spend time trying to get a feel for what “zero tension” really feels like, away from the guitar. I used to have chronic tension everywhere, and it unconsciously spiked whenever I picked up the guitar. Try some relaxation exercises or mindfulness. You might not get to have this zero-state while playing guitar, but at least you’ll be more aware of where you’re at.

@guitarenthusiast, I can’t see any concrete or actionable advice in your responses. I agree with the intent of your message – at least, the intent I see – that players will need to deal with tension. You said “that’s an inner-experience the player has to learn and refine over a long period of time” – but I’m not sure how to state that in a takeaway for OP. Any suggestions?

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#12

Thanks everyone! There’s a lot of awesome advice here. Hearing how you all experience this same journey that I’m on currently is absolutely invaluable. It helps getting me to that point where something clicks into place. So once a again… a BIG thank you for taking the time to share.

#13

@guitarenthusiast It’s all good. His response made sense to me. Naturally you’d expect that when ever muscles are being used there will be some tension. But when I get impatient, I lock up and try to power through. That’s what I need to learn to eliminate. All good advice. :slight_smile:

#14

Muscles contract in a range of motion, so let’s say 1 is a low contraction and 10 high.
They also have to reset, and the farther along that range you’ve contracted, the farther you have to reset.

The less you contract, you less they have to reset.
This is why it feels like the muscles are just seizing up and slowing you down if you are putting to much contraction in. Also with this excessive contraction can activate surrounding muscles that are not intended to be activated.

My advice on this is use as little force as you possibly can, And work it up from there.
There is a point in skill development where things seem to just flow with almost no effort, thats what we are all after. And it’s that point where you are doing just enough to sound out a note, but not to much that you even really feel the force.

If you take certain drugs, for example beer, your nervous system gets stimulated, (as long as you don’t over do it…) and your nervous system basicly gets more range of fine contraction. This is what you are striving towards, developing that fine detail of nervous system control. You can do this by trying to play very lightly for a number of years.
It’s what in parts separates us from other apes, fine nervous system control.

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#15

Because I did not elect to comment on this thread for the purpose of dispensing that sort of advice. My participation in this thread was responding to what I believe - or rather, know - is bad advice. At any rate, my post history is filled with thoughts on correcting poor physical performance on the instrument and the usual tension problems associated with it.

For you and OP? A good read is The Principles of Correct Guitar Practice by Jamey Andreas. It’s an award-winning book and it discusses in an unbelievably detailed manner the psychological and physical aspects of guitar practice, but not in a way that is overly-zen or pretentious. It’s worth looking into as there are many useful exercises that can help alleviate tension.

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#16

I’m not understanding what qualifies the advise I gave as bad - but I’m open to learning…it only stands to benefit.

If we can keep the focus on the topic of tension I’m all ears. I’m really not interested in the non-guitar playing stuff and don’t believe anyone else here is either.

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#17

Hi all, brief moderation interlude… sorry in advance if I sound patronising :slight_smile:

I think @Troy has already addressed the topic of “please let’s not be confrontational” which is one of the key rules/principles of our forum.

It’s totally ok to disagree about ideas, but let’s avoid personal attacks (even if very mild).

So a good formula moving forward is

“I disagree about X because [insert evidence / logical deduction / quantum mechanical argument]”

…again sorry if this sounds patronising but that’s the simplest way to run things peacefully around here!

---- end of moderation interlude ----

Back to tension, get ready for my personal opinion!

Note that also for me this is a work in progress: there are some passages that I feel I can play very relaxed, others where I think I’m working way too hard for my own good. So I’d like to fix this as much as anyone else.

However, I have always been skeptical of all these exercises along the lines of “try to fret the note as lightly as possible” or similar. This is because:

  • I find them incredibly boring
  • it seems like micro-management to me. And I don’t think it’s realistic to micromanage one’s guitar playing at all times.

So my hypothesis (not necessarily backed by science) is the following:

relaxed playing is the result, not the cause, of good technique.

More practically, I think a good principle is to always find the easiest possible way to play a given passage. I’m pretty sure that the feeling of ease directly translates into more relaxed playing. Conversely, we often tense up when we perceive a passage as “difficult”.

#18

Couldn’t think of which part to quote in my response so this will do!

A major thing for tension, IMO, is simply being aware. Many people don’t know how tense they are, eg they can’t even place their hand on the fretboard naturally. Also, any unfamiliar movement will cause some tension somewhere, as your brain and body struggle to find out what to do.

Perhaps a way to reframe the micromanagement idea would be to see it as a chance for you to be hyper alert, and this also lets the body do its own observing (proprioception). Everything comes from the nervous system, conscious and unconscious mind, and this different mode of observation is probably good to consider.

It probably goes both ways. :slight_smile:

Cheers all! Z

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#19

First question for the committee, is this a high degree of tension? Just watch the first 2-3 seconds, the rest of the video is irrelevant for this discussion:

I’m sure we’ve all seen that clip as it’s used in various CtC videos. To me, it looks like his forearm/elbow has a fair amount of tension. I could be wrong!!! It could be that playing at speeds this high just require a little more tension in general. And maybe he “feels” quite relaxed when he plays this.

Second question, almost rhetorical, is this good technique? I feel like the only person who’d say “no” is Al D since Rusty is using his elbow lol! Only throwing that out there because if there is a moderate amount of tension, that means that it’s quite possible to play with good technique and have this degree of tension.

I like this, I don’t know if I can accept it though! It seems like the chicken and the egg argument lol! If Rusty improved his technique…would he relax more? If he relaxed more, would that make his already awesome technique better? These I feel are philosophical questions. I wish we could leverage science to answer them! Maybe the closest we have so far is the John Taylor studies where he was hooked up to a computer and had his muscle activation measured?

Now for some of my infamous anecdotal information :slight_smile: When I am practicing picking anywhere above 16ths @ 200 bpm, I’m at my best when I achieve what feels like relaxed motions. Once I start feeling tension, it’s over. I also am able to reach my highest speeds when I’m at my most relaxed. Now, I haven’t done much practicing in that range recently because trying to sync my left hand seems impossible (for me) and I’ll probably never be able to play anything other than a ‘picking’ exercise at those speeds. I guess I run into this most when I’m trying to just floor some chunks that will end up being played in the 180 -190 range and I’m just trying to really push it so the slower speeds feel more easy and … relaxed.

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#20

For me if I can think of other things that need fine control, we can apply the same concepts to guitar.
I like to think of drawing, or painting. The control comes from years of delicate practice. You don’t put lots of force in.

Even shading in, can be an aggressive n fast movement, is a light technique. Even tho it can be fast back n forth. Of course going up n down against gravity is bound to require more tension. Tho its still the same basic concept.

could take football/soccer. The best control of the ball is all in fine delicate movements. If you are tense you can’t flow well.

But to counter that I also notice the fastest movement I can do is that button mashing tense shaking/vibration type thing. Thats achived by tensing both opposing muscle quite hard. But its also very un controllable. But that kinda speed is not going to be used often at all.

With my attempts at a Jason Becker like technique that has a fair ammount of elbow movement, what really helped was incorporating a lot of forearm rotation. If you add that, and wrist movement, you’ll take a lot of work out of the elbow.

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