Woah it’s been years since I’ve been here, anyway lemme get straight to business. I started practicing like crazy and man I hurt. I know it’s incorrect technique coz I managed to get some pretty impressive results with my legato playing BUT my picking hand is slowly killing me and I kinda can’t practice to avoid hurting it even more. It’s obviously because my picking is tensed shit but I wanna ask for any advices that u have to speed up muscle/joint restoration. I’m tryna go full on Gilbert but I just can’t practise as much as I want. I’ll appreciate any advices on speeding up the recovery process. I’m already trying to limit my training sessions to an hour with a half hour break but I still feel the fatigue building up over time even in me left hand.
Take at least a week off… seriously. Re-read what you posted - can’t you see that it is your practicing that has to change - not your restoration. You can only shorten restoration time by not injuring yourself in the first place.
You simply can’t go full gilbert mode with crazy tension. Its counter productive and is making you play less and less.
I’m with PickingApprentice. It’s not about recovery time, there seems to be something fundamentally wrong with how you’re playing the instrument, mechanically speaking.
Try purposefully focussing on being as relaxed as possible as you play. There may be some tension in your neck, shoulders, arms or wrists that you’re not even aware of.
Best of luck!
I think I didn’t explain myself clear nuff. I call it tensed shit with pretty high standards in mind and my shoulders and forearm are soft as titties. I was talking bout actual fatigue in my thumb muscle from doing picking a lot. So yeah I’m still looking for some advices on speeding up the recovery time.
P.S. I kinda use index finger/thumb extension to go to the treble side and in that position the thumb muscle does some work so I blame that. Maybe I should do more shoulder movement for string switching since I don’t like the turn of the wrists for that although I do it to a degree.
By all means switch it up mechanically so that you don’t labour specific parts of you hand/wrist/arm, but you can’t really shorten recovery time - fatigue is fatigue.
I think I recall seeing a video by @milehighshred, where he was practicing a passage -notching up the metronome. He seemed to take a good bit of rest between rep sets to avoid fatigue and practice over a long period of time. I now take longer between reps on the most demanding stuff (where I am pushing outside me comfort speed zone). It really helps delay fatigue and I actually find that my practice is more effective. Another thing is trying to get the baance of warm-up right. Too little warm-up means that I risk injury and I play like crap, but too much means that the practice session is shorter due to fatigue. Cardinal sin is to try and cram the speed practice session in when you don’t have a lot of time. In those cases, I only practice moderate speeds.
I actually warm up playing really quick since I moved to what I found more effective. I kinda force me hands to be warmed by doing stretches and really rubbing them fast round my forearm and fingers etc. Makes your blood flowing and coupled with a few stretches I feel like it’s the best way. I guess I’ll take a few days break from fast playing spend some time ear training.
Do think that this is still a good idea, seeing that you are getting injured?
I like stretches too, just make sure you do it gently and work up to a full stretch. I once wrecked my hand with an overzealous stretch… never again!!
I think I can play circles round u bro
Let’s see that video then.
LMAO I can’t believe you went there! That may be the case, but by the sound of your original post, you wont be playing much longer…
Indeed, that’s what I do. Fatigue happens, mentally and physically, when one pushes themselves to their max. There’s no avoiding it. And, if you didn’t get fatigued, you didn’t push yourself as hard as possible!
Hey, first off @IamTheNobody this is not an acceptable response. Please review the forum guidelines and let’s keep it on topic and civil, no personal attacks / provocations. Seems like @PickingApprentice is making a good faith effort to be helpful here; you’re free to disagree but this is not the way to go about it.
To your actual question, it does sound like both some additional rest and a change in technique may be needed. If you can post a video of what you’re doing currently that may give us more to go on with giving e.g. specific suggestions for tweaking your grip, motion, etc. And of course if it’s persistent pain, more than just occasional fatigue, may be worth talking to a doctor in case it’s potentially a sign of something more serious.
I will second this. This is totally not cool. This is not the cooperative attitude we want around here.
The response to your original question that I always give is that I personally have a zero-tolerance policy for any pain during playing. If it hurts. stop immediately, and don’t start playing again until it goes away. The risks are too high. As far as speeding up the recovery, traditional medicine has the answers and it probably depends on what specifically is happening. But if it’s inflammation from overuse and it’s in the early stages, rest is the key ingredient to recovery. I don’t know of any magic bullets here.
@milehighshred has been at this a long time and also uses techniques I don’t use that may be more prone to fatigue. So I’ll let him speak for the hyperpicking (> Gilbert) range of speeds.
What I can tell you for the techniques I use, which go up to “Paul Gilbert” levels of speed but not beyond, is that fatigue is never necessary and only detrimental. If your goal is learning fine motor coordination, there is no benefit in getting “gym sore”. Playing “Tumeni Notes” at 160bpm is not a strength or conditioning issue. It’s all coordination and you learn that stuff best when you are totally fresh and comfortable.