Hey @jzohrab I appreciate you filming that video! It is very difficult to get my thumb like yours without my wrist cramping up.
My hand has absolutely no tension or pain until i put my pinky down. Then my hand starts to cramp up and my thumb starts to push too hard.
Do you have a good local teacher that you can work with?
I’m sure I could find one. All the teachers I’ve worked with taught me more theory then anything.
Hi @meepmeep - Yeah finding good teachers is tough. Find good local players, perhaps, and ask them if they give lessons/pointers, or if they can recommend a teacher. Drag that you get hand pain!
cheers, z
I didn’t see this but I only scanned the responses. What scale are you playing? It’s kind of An understood thing here you know the fretboard. Your right hand seems damn nice but your fretting hand is lacking.
Here I am 
I am a bit skeptical of the “minimal motions” approach. In my opinion relaxation comes from having the correct technique, not from trying to make your movements as small as possible.
More concretely, in Technique Critique threads we don’t tend to see good results when people try to make super small motions. Not sure if you have seen @Troy’s latest experiments but he is reaching crazy picking speeds with huuuge motions!
True, we mostly review picking hand stuff, but also in terms on fretting, I don’t see many elite players making minuscule fretting motions. The movements of the best players typically have what I would call a “reasonable size”. See for example Shawn Lane, probably the scariest fretting hand in known history:
Wow, lots of posts in this thread by now! I don’t think I have much to add about your playing.
Regarding the wrist pain thing – your neck seems pretty beefy. Perhaps try a slimmer neck? And are there really that many situations that require fretting with all fingers on the lowest string at the same time? It really is the absolute worst case as far as the wrist is concerned…
As for the thumb placement. I’m not sure I agree with this:
I think the thumb should go wherever it needs to. Priority number 1 is keeping the wrist as straight as possible most of the time. This means the thumb sometimes must go over the neck, for instance. The classical position works in classical guitar playing because the neck is elevated, making the wrist straight and allowing the hand to “hang” from the fretboard. But, there’s lots of conflicting advice about this, in this thread and elsewhere.
Case in point:
Sorry @Pepepicks66, I just don’t think that’s very good advice for someone complaining about wrist pain! Look at how bent your wrist is. It is an injury waiting to happen…
hey @tommo good to hear from ya! I appreciate the advice. Would really love for ya to check out the videos I posted to see if you can point out anything unorthodox that you may notice that maybe others havent? Or maybe a different point of view?
Also, I must say, as I’ve been trying to keep my motions more minimal… it’s been less comfortable and more tense on my wrist for sure. Also, my thumb is generally at the top of the fretboard when i’m just casually playing and not working on an exercise. Kinda like this.
@Johannes My strat is one of those player strats so the neck is a “Modern C"-shaped neck profile. It’s a comfortable neck for sure, but the only electric I have.
Sure! I think the “Quack quack” ( 
) video was very promising! You should aim to play something where your right hand motions look exactly like that. I believe others have pointed out that this looks like DSX motion, so I would focus on licks that only change strings after a downstroke for the time being.
I checked out also the fretting in your first video and didn’t see anything outrageous about your posture. I venture the hypothesis that most of the tension may come from the fact that your hands are unsure of what movements to make, so you may get random muscles being activated at the wrong time and so on.
I would hope that discomfort will gradually decrease as you find more patterns that “click”. Again, I think your initial successes will come from DSX stuff.
Give it a shot and let’s see how it goes
If you experience lingering pain or soreness after playing guitar, stop playing for a few days until it goes away. And if it doesn’t go away, yes, I agree that seeing a doctor is a good idea.
As @Johannes is pointing out, there is primarily one thing that matters when it comes to wrist pain, and it is keeping it straight. If you’re looking at the thumb, you’re looking in the wrong place. You want a wrist position with as close to no flexion-extension as possible. Whatever thumb position gives that to you is “correct”, and that means there are multiple “correct” ways. The “blues” approach, as @Drew calls it, with the thumb over the top will produce this. As will several other approaches. Straight wrist.
If you are trying to play wide stretches on the low strings, you are going to see some wrist flex. That is precisely a worst-case scenario. Don’t play those lines, or don’t play them all the time or for long amounts of time at once.
“Sometimes the only winning move is not to play.”
Thanks @Troy I appreciate your input. I have a terrible time keeping my thumb straight and I always felt like if It curls, it’s wrong. Did anything stand out in the videos I shared? I am absolutely fine with not playing for a few days, but I really just want to figure out why I can’t seem to get my hands relaxed when I play. What is the best angle to film to pin point my wrist problem? Above like in my boop doop video? Or would another angle be better?
I know asking and asking and asking will only go so far… and experimenting and trying things out is the best way. I’ve just been at it for so long with no luck. I appreciate everyones help from this community. It’s truly so rewarding to know people here are so willing and happy to help.
Again, the straightness of the wrist is what matters for wrist pain. When you say you “felt” like something was wrong, do you mean you felt pain? Any thumb position that allows the wrist to be straight, and doesn’t cause pain anywhere else, is a “correct” thumb position. There are multiple hand positions that satisfy these requirements, including what Drew describes as the blues position (thumb over the neck) and several others. Have you ever noticed that when EVH plays wide-stretch licks, he points the guitar straight up in the air and puts the thumb near the high E string? It’s to keep the wrist straight:
These positions are all “correct” in the sense that they cause no or less pain. You may not be able to reach all strings/frets from all of these hand positions, but that’s much less of a concern. Personally, I just play what’s comfortable. I stay away from anything where I need to bend the wrist too far, or for very long, because it’s just not worth it to me. Call me lazy — injury-free and lazy.
Checklist:
That’s it!
Tom Gilroy here on the forum has written up some more detailed stuff on one particular method he likes for getting the wrist to be straight. You can do a search for his posts and see if any of that works for you.
On another note, you indicated that you’ve watched the whole Primer but it looks like you may have missed thed table top tests and tremolo test for ironing out picking motions. Is that just because those updates are new, and you hadn’t seen then yet? Or were we not clear enough in those sections that they’re mandatory and not skippable? Any feedback appreciated.
In the mean time, I recommend giving those lessons a shot and recording your test values, just to get a diagnostic on where you are at. Your motions look good, but knowing your potential is always useful to make sure you’re on track, and don’t waste time on slow / inefficient things that are obviously way below what you can really do.
@Troy You’ve created a revolutionary platform for guitar players and everything you put out is crystal clear. It’s just some people (like myself) have a hard time staying focused and retaining information. Also sometimes videos just don’t quite do the same thing as a hands on real life teacher helping you. You know? I really do try very hard. I’ve gone through the table top tests and tremolo tests. I know it sounds silly, but I just can’t seem to apply anything to my playing. 
I am going to go back to tests now though and do some deep work. Also, thanks for the suggestion on tom gilroys posts. I will check those out as well.
You started this thread using a motion that was not your fastest and not optimal. This is where maybe we fell down in not making it clear that the results of the tests are how you know which motions to use.
However thanks to the other fine folks on the thread, they reminded you to do the tremolo test, which you did, and filmed it, resulting in a much faster motion. That’s the motion you should use from now on. That is progress. Very loud and clear progress.
I understand that a new picking motion may feel unfamiliar and you may not know how to combine it with fretting at first. That’s how you know you’re actually learning. If everything feels familiar, you probably didn’t make any substantive change.
Damn truth right there… woof. 
Can I just pay you tons of money to be my teacher? 
You didn’t fall down in your clarity, it’s just hard to apply it to my playing and not just tremolo picking a single note.
But yeah in all seriousness. I know I have a lot of work to do and I know where my problems are. Learning something new and re training my technique after years of uncomfortable playing seems impossible. But I appreciate your kind words and positivity. I love to learn.
There’s a lot of gold in this thread.
Here is another tremolo attempt
So that’s WAAAAY faster than your original video.
The thing that I’m ‘seeing’ and I put that in quotes because I’m still very new to this too, is that in your original clip, your hand and picking appears to be primarily an USX movement, where you’re flying off the strings on upstrokes and buried on down.
This new clip with the tremolo, that seems to be in a ‘state of flux’ or leaning maybe more towards DSX although it really does seem to shift around (because it’s new and in a learning phase so no worries, just observations) where you’re escaping on downstrokes. I recognize the ‘indecision’ of the movement because I’m in a similar place. You can see in my clips in this Miserlou thread of mine.
Anyway, just some food for thought, you might find it WAY easier to blitz through some picking licks if you take and apply this tremolo motion you’ve got with some simple DSX style licks to see if you can link up and bash a few quick wins out.
That’s what I’m going to do
Yeah! My picking hand is like “this way no this way no this way no this way AHHHH” and my brain is like " wat? " Applying that tremolo motion to licks for me is like asking a 4 year old to do a back flip. The poor kid is probably gonna break their neck.
Appreciate the food for thought. I’ll take a look at your videos too!
