Role Of Central Nervous System In Playing

Playing Technique
#1

I subscribe to Masters Of Mechanics but I haven’'t seen anything on this yet although maybe I’ve missed watching a few things.

The thing I’m mainly interested in regarding the central nervous system is “burnout.” It feels like my CNS is just fried. I don’t know what else to call it except maybe exhaustion. Sometimes when I guess I’ve been overplaying, things I should be able to play easily I can’t play at all. Sometimes even when I don’t think I’ve been overplaying I can’t play things I thought I had mastered. It seems like a huge waste of time to go back and try to learn techniques I thought I had mastered already.

Is central nervous system “burnout” or “exhaustion” a real thing or is this just psychological? If it is real, have there been studies as to how much you can play before you start to actually get worse?

#2

That sounds like a medical study Ace, wish I could help.

:bear:

#3

I appreciate that, Hanky. You’re right though, it would be a medical study. It’s just so frustrating to think I have something mastered and then the next time I pick up the guitar it sounds like all the progress I made in my previous practice session which involved 5 hours of technical work on perfecting one lick has just disappeared.

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#4

I suggest watching some Tony Robbins or Bob Proctor videos on YouTube. I’m guessing burnout is a little of both Psych and Physical. I do breathing exercises and visualization. If you are practicing and you feel pain…STOP!!! Give it a rest. It could be just muscle fatique, but don’t take any chances. I say this with some experience in that 3 years ago, after weight lifting, I was hanging a flat screen on the wall and tore my bicep tendon off the radius bone. It was surgically repaired and I have no issues with it. Don’t spawn tendinitis or carpel tunnel syndrome. Pay attention to your body and mindset! Sometimes, I pickup the guitar and I’m not very in sync. So I slow down and pay attention to movements and technique. Usually, after I get warmed up, blood in the arms and hands, the playing comes within a few minutes. I’m studying these aspects of playing because in the future I want to teach beginners and intermediates these basics to lay a foundation.

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#5

You tore your bicep? What was the recovery time on that? I’m glad to hear it seems to have healed well since you aren’t having any issues with it.

I think what I was writing about is either muscle fatigue or CNS fatigue, especially since it seems to happen if I haven’t had much sleep the night before.

#6

Yes, it is very real. Happens all the time in weight training. Certainly happens with anything where you push your limits.

I’m having a crap guitar day myself. Feels like my brain is in a jar of mud. I just can’t play as well as I know I can. Sometimes it just happens.

Seems like the older we get the more rest we need. It sucks, but it just seems to be the case.

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#7

Damn, even John Taylor has bad days!! :dizzy_face:

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#8

It’s a bit interesting, but lately I have been reading a lot about how cns fatigue may not be attributed to what people think. Apparently one’s central nervous system is not as much “burnt out” as their stress levels may be high or recovery low. At least many findings are confirming that cns fatigue alone is not the single determining factor of limitations in performance. Even when I am weight training I find that burnout doesn’t always happen when I think it will. Example, I’ve deadlifted 500lbs and then felt much better than times where I was using less weight or even not training, and funnily enough played guitar great right afterwards so who knows!

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#9

Yyyyup! Happens more than I’d like. But, nobody is free from having off days.

#10

Do you think that CNS burnout is being used as a blanket statement for these symptoms? Kind of seems that way to me. Too much stress in your life from various forms = something is going to suffer!

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#11

Exactly. Any time one feels run down they attribute it to CNS burnout when there are clearly always other factors at play. Rarely is it that or just that. That’s why it’s so hard to gauge a good training session (or practice session) from a not so good one. At the same time, one could have eliminated stressors, gotten adequate rest and nutrition and still performed poorly on a given day so it makes me wonder: what are we missing here? I have been reading a lot recently about the idea of “flow state,” and perhaps that is something to look into when it comes to being able to create the best internal environment for success. It’s truly awesome and it’s basicaly analyzing how top performers in their given craft are sometimes “in the zone” and operating on all cylinders without even thinking about it, and then trying to figure out how to recreate this on command.

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#12

“CNS burnout” or whatever is the proper name for this phenomenon is a complex subject. It would be interesting to see Troy and his team do some research on what is the optimal number of hours a week of guitar practice. Also, what portion of that time should be spent playing at top speed, which obviously presents a far greater stress on the system than less intense manners of guitar practice. This subject would perhaps be best addressed by an exercise scientist but that’s just a thought; I’m not sure that an exercise scientist would be the correct person to ask about this subject.

I don’t know if there are people who study exercise physiology specifically as it relates to musicians. If so, an interview with one would be of enormous value. Just imagine if perhaps the optimal number of hours of practice a week is only half of what we’re doing! The amount of time saved as well as eliminating the wasted progress caused by overloading the system would be invaluable to serious guitarists who are trying to reach their maximum potential in guitar playing.

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#13

I think the good thing about guitar is you can always work on something COMPLETELY different.

If I feel I’m getting burnt out on trying to pick fast I’ll go through a page of the chord voicings from the Aebersold “Rhythm Section Workout” all round the circle of 5ths*, or work on spread triads and inversions all over the neck. Just try and challenge a different part of the brain and give the twitchy movements a rest for a bit.

*OK, as far around the circle of 5ths as I get before I get bored.

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#14

This is something new to me. I’ve never heard of it before. Perhaps fatigue is really what we all deal with, and figuring out how we deal with it is the key?

Unfortunately, it seems to me that once I get a hold on how to do things and what to do, it changes eventually. Maybe in a week, maybe several months. But, inevitably, nothing seems to stay the same in how we can progress because little factors seem to keep changing things. Even just getting older seems to be something to deal with. Certainly can’t eat the same junk food I did 10 years ago without far greater consequences today. And, I can’t handle as much volume in guitar practice as I used to when I first started playing either.

#15

My guess is this will vary from person to person. Much like that Mentzer interview you sent me, the spectrum of work volume one can handle will be different for everyone.

#16

Absolutely! You learned well!

AS for your mention of not being able to handle as much volume in guitar practice as you once could, that just means you will have to make up for less quantity of practice with higher quality of practice.

#17

This is so true. I remember Jim Rohn and later Tony Robbins talking about something along the lines of how the person you were to get to where you currently arein life is not the same person that you’ll need to become to get past that point. In other words different techniques lend themselves to progressing only through certain levels of skill and some things only work up until a certain point.

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#18

Doing something like working on one lick for five hours is total overkill. You get a much more effective result by “chunking” (remember that from Troys videos?) for brief periods of time than you do spending hours on one little thing.

I found one thing that I was just pitiful at this past week that I worked on for about 25-35 minutes. The next day, the improvement was so drastically improved I thought perhaps I hadn’t slept enough the previous day. Maybe I hadn’t.

Sometimes I’ll work on something, then after half an hour or so try something completely different for 15 minutes then go back to the first thing I was working on. You won’t notice the improvement the same day. It’s the next day or the day after that. And sometimes the improvement is slower than we like.

And some days there are times the guitar feels like I’d never played before. Everyone has good days and bad days.

#19

This post may be way off the mark, but you never know, it could be related…

Our world has become a sea of wifi microwaves. Between the cell towers, your home wifi, all your neighbor’s wifi, the smart electric meter on the side of your house, your neighbor’s smart meter, your cell phone, your wife’s cellphone we are living in a multilayered grid of unseen microwaves.

Humanity has submitted itself to a huge experiment and is literally swimming in unseen electromagnetic frequencies 24/7.

Some are more sensitive than others, and there are lots of symptoms related to continual wifi exposure, brain fog being one of them.

Other symptoms:

  • extreme fatigue
  • headaches
  • tinnitus
  • insomnia
  • high blood pressure
  • accelerated heart-rate
  • adhd-like mind racing

There are some simple things you can do to mitigate the effects if this is the cause. Getting rid of all your personal wifi in your home is a start. You can also shield your home from the pulses that emanate from a smart-meter (which, I feel, is the biggest issue for wifi-sensitive people). Shielding must be done properly, so do your research, otherwise you can end up trapping microwaves inside your shielding and make the effects even worse.

I have come to the conclusion that I am sensitive to wifi frequencies and have been able to mitigate the effects by taking certain measures in my home.

#20

One of the “science of learning” interviews mentions that there is a natural “drop off” in any given skill from one session to the next, and that drop off is less for a given skill when more than one skill is included in a each practice session. I’m sure that doesn’t mean you can practice everything all the time, but pounding away on one lick for hours at a time might not be the best way to go about it. Although the interview also says you’ll get the fastest rise in one skill that way, in that session, you’ll also get the biggest drop off. As with most of this stuff, we have to find our own sweet spot.

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