Hi all,
Since discovering I favor DSX motion, I’ve been practicing that more and more. And I notice that I’m getting progressively more sore over my proximal forearm- particularly with wrist extensor motions. This is commonly known as tennis elbow. Anyone else find a good way to deal with this? I’m thinking I have to change my primary motion mechanic do something less “reverse dart thrower “ like…
Primer>Motion tutorials >wrist motion> last chapter is on endurance/unnecessary tension and can be applied to any and all motions
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I had some tennis elbow for quite a while, I think it was from trying to do pullups while being fat.
I have a really amazing physical therapist here, he gave me a lot of strengthening exercises and eventually it went away totally. I think it takes a really long time to go away, for the record.
Topical anti-inflammatorys like Voltaren might be helpful.
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@Happidural I’m pretty sure I’m in the minority here by far, but an easy fix would be experimenting with a warmup routine if you haven’t already.
Similar to what @Sully75 said, you can find strengthening exercises but also warmups that can be done before you sit down with the guitar. Because of my other activities in life (mostly physical), I tend to need to warm up for everything regardless, so adding a warmup before guitar has been beneficial for me.
I should say I don’t think you get rid of tennis elbow just by resting and it might be coming from somewhere other than your guitar playing. In my case and I think in most cases it takes a long time to get rid of, but once mine was gone, it’s been gone for quite a while.
The stuff that made it go away is positive stuff (exercise/strength training) that I need to do for my chronic fatness. So it’s good.
Thanks Sully - I think the epicondylitis has been with me for a while- exacerbated when I tried to get healthy, doing pull ups etc… I stopped all that, but I’m bringing it up in this forum because I definitely notice it’s worse after I sit down to play guitar for a while. And from talking with ortho docs, they say any chronic wrist extension - like picking can exacerbate. I tried picking like Marty Friedman for a bit last night but couldn’t play for shit like that 
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got that but also be careful because it might that if your elbow is better, your wrist motion might be fine.
I also have knee arthritis and when it was really bad, my friend suggested this youtube Physical Therapist who was like “if you have knee arthritis you need to walk this way to take the weight off your knees”. So I started to try to change my gait to this kind of weird thing he was suggesting.
That and everything else I was doing slowly made my arthritis MUCH worse. I was really in despair about having to get a knee replacement which I didn’t want at all. I reached out to another PT and this guy saved me. Basically just doing strength and flexility training. But the first thing he said was to just walk normally with my normal gait, that all the little changes I was trying to make were making things worse.
Anyway, just a thought, perhaps just fix the tennis elbow if your picking in general is working for you. It might make it worse while you have tennis elbow but be fine otherwise.
Or not, but it’s a possibility.
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I also gave myself tennis elbow when first learning to play fast. It eventually went away but if I remember correctly it took 6 months or more. The thing with mine was it never hurt while playing guitar only during other activities. So I just ignored it until it went away. Thinking back that was probably a bad idea