Of course, there’s the interview on www.troygrady.com/interviews with Terry Syrek who has focal dystonia. I’m not sure if there will be anything new in that video for the OP or maybe he has already watched it; but possibly it will be interesting,
William
+1 for David Leisner’s book. Alexander, you should definitely get a copy Playing With Ease. In fact all guitar players should read this book. David had to end his performing career for a number of years because of focal dystonia. He is now fully recovered.
I wonder sometimes if I have it. I emailed David describing my symptoms about a year ago and he seems to think I have it. My technique is sometimes effortless. And sometimes I feel like I can barely play a 3 chord country song.
For me, a low inflammatory diet and exercise seems to help astronomically with my guitar playing. And proper sleep. If I do have focal dystonia (sometimes I wonder if it’s all just mental), then it kinda makes sense that shocking the nervous and musculoskeletal system a few times a week with weight lifting and cardio may help reduce the symptoms.
Over the last 2 years, especially with quarantine last year, I was extremely depressed. I was overeating/eating junk food, gaining weight, staying up very late and very sedentary. Even though I was practicing a lot, my guitar playing seemed to be extremely unreliable. Some days I barely felt like I could get through the chords to a CCR song. Then some days I felt like I could share the stage with Steve Vai. It was very frustrating. That’s when I got Lesiner’s book and emailed him. It’s not a quick fix. It will take lots of awareness during practice. As we are trying to fix years or decades of deeply embedded habits.
For me, even more so than the book, my breakthrough came after getting back to my usual paleo diet and dropping a few pounds. I started to feel much better mentally. But it wasn’t til I got back into the gym that I really started to feel solid on guitar again. I’ve also been getting to bed much earlier and generally getting a solid 7-8 hours of sleep. It all works together. I think overall for me the low inflammatory diet is the most critical thing, as the food we eat can drastically affect our lifestyle. Followed closely by staying active and, for me, lifting heavy objects.
There is hope, Alexander. Keep your head up. Get the book. Correspond with David - he’s a super nice guy. Maybe think about changing your diet and exercise routine if you aren’t already doing so. The standard America diet wreaks havoc on most people (it’s obvious with our waist lines, but not so obvious what’s happening on the inside), causing, among other things, total body systemic inflammation. So it kinda makes sense to me that a neurological disorder could be managed somewhat by reducing inflammation. I know it helps me a lot.
Hopefully that’s helpful. Good luck
Hi Alexander,
Thank you so much for sharing your story.
I am a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician in america. I take care of veterans predominantly but i can’t say that i’m an expert on the topic. I just wanted to give my reaction to a couple of things that were mentioned.
Hopefully you are learning along the way that this is not a condition that is very clearly understood in the medical literature. We know that it is a central and not peripheral nervous system disorder. The usual approach that most neurologists will take is to look for other causes first and once other things are ruled out, they can reassure and tell you that you areesafe from that standpoint or they will offer you neurotoxin injections (such as botox).
One thing that i found interesting was your concern for why you would develop something out of the blue like this when you haven’t made any changes to your regimen. Sometimes, age is the only thing that has changed to make it so. There are many normal age related changes to the neuromuscular physiology such as the dropout of motor neurons (about 1% per year), loss of size and number of muscle fibers, speed of never conduction, brain volume loss etc…
So with athletes, musicians, or anyone presenting to me who is having issues with their regimens, we start introducing warm-ups, conditioning, strengthening, and flexibility regimens to compensate for these things. I think the first step in your path to recovery is to accept that (which you may already have done) and figure out your new normal.
-gautam
Compulsive playing…
Well, that’s me. I start my day with about 2-3 hours of running through the band’s setlist or day’s projects, then drive to the studio where I work, play all day on musical projects and then gig in the evenings.
I’m now officially scared.
Wishing the OP all the very best!!!
HEy Folks,
This is probably my first post here - I jioned up as a result of my declining technique…turns out I have focal dystonia too, as such I’m currently hunting around for resources and help!
I’d be interested to hear the OP’s progress to date…
Like many others I went through a period (2014-2018) of constant practice and re-training of my technique as I used to think my holding the pick with two fingers was wrong…I’m a self taught guitarist of 35 years or so.
Many articles about the issue discuss over practising or drastic changes in technique, I’m convinced the change in my basic approach is the cause.
Any advice or pointers to resources greatly appreciated!
practicing the individual movements might help. So slowly practice each movement slowly separated with a space. I don’t have this condition, so in many ways I’m talking out my ass, but it seems logical to me and with everything I’ve learned over the years that overpractice can blend separate movements into one.
As thats how the body makes movements more efficient.
Perhaps practice slowly with a click track or metronome.
The majority of fast playing is just on the edge of a single mental command. A practiced lick over n over blended into other licks practiced over n over… at some point it becomes blurred into one movement with no conscious individuality.
Troy have made videos about memory sections where you just inact a lick and it happens automaticly. I think this is the extreme of this.
Anyone here dealing with it, can you play slowly, perhaps improvise ok?
Hello all, OP here. After 6 years of dealing with this condition and reading about other people’s experiences, I’ve learned that talks about relearning, etc., are probably just wishful thinking and denying the inevitable. Or maybe I just have a different condition than those people who somehow managed to improve their condition. In my case, I feel that the problem is of a ‘hardware’ nature, so to speak. I mean that something in my nervous system gradually degrades physically, and there’s no way to reverse or even stop that. It’s hard to play even slowly when just a single move is uncomfortable to make, and this discomfort increases over time, no matter what I do. To this day, my condition affects not just playing music but also everyday tasks involving fine movements. I suspect it can be an early onset of Parkinson’s, although neurologists (I spent 10 days in a neuro hospital recently) say that’s not the case.
can you make a video?
I know you just said nothing helps but made this before you posted that. Idk if it’ll help but anything is worth a try. As far as I know it’s not relearning, it’s removing triggers of automatic motions.
