Tendonitis and injury - what are your warmup rituals?

Playing Technique
#1

Are there any warm up rituals that you do before playing to avoid injury? I suffered from tendonitis in different places, but now I found my equilibrium with all sort of things, would you be so kind to share your experience about this dreadful issue?
Personally after some horrible experiences with doctors, cortisone shots and quitting music for months, I found my own way to keep strains as far as possible. Here’s my routine:

  1. Immersion in hot water for about 3-4 min up to elbows
  2. Slightly pull all fingers, whitout crackling
  3. In and outwards wrist strech
  4. Wrist circular motion in both ways
  5. Powerball method: I put a metal sphere in a ceral bowl and try to make it spin as fast as possilbe with both hands and both ways
  6. Elbow outward Strech, elbows touching the body and both thumbs sticking out imitating hitch hikers thumbs up
  7. Elbow inward Strech, with a high elbow at a right angle try to swim your and across a straight path, just like swimming freestyle front crawl technique
  8. Shoulders: it’s important to strech them because they are the main and the strongest engine to our kinetic shred chain that is our arm. I use therabands, hook up the band to a handle an practice M, Y and T pulls that you can find illustrated all over you tube.
    This may seem excessive, but If you want to be able to keep playing 5-8 hours a day for years and years this is a good way. I am a mechanical engineering student and sports enthusiast, I take this stuff pretty seriously and scientifically. You must THINK LIKE AN ATHLETE!!!
    This is prevention, but a BIG part of strain and injury just like in sports is BAD technique and especially don’t RUSH, your body needs time to get to be confortable with new stuff. Be paitient and use the metronome. I thank you for your time, plaese give me your thoughts :slight_smile:
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Thank you, and a couple of questions
#2
#3
#4

Good question. There are a couple related topics on here you may want to take a look at:

There are some great replies in those topics. I’ll keep this new one open and maybe we can focus here on the question of warmup, which is something we definitely find interesting but don’t know a whole lot about! (Edited post title to reflect this…)

Anyone else have warmup suggestions to share?

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#5

FWIW, I’m a firm believer in stretching after physical activity (in addition to anything you do before). I found stretching afterwards eliminated all the tightness and soreness that would otherwise follow playing sports.

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#6

Hi Dave, thanks for sharing your idea, so this means that you don’t strech before playing?

#7

Before playing guitar, I don’t normally stretch. For something more physical that might pull muscles, then I would.

#8

I often find that playing guitar in itself does not cause strains and pains, but guitar in conjuction with other (new/unusual) activities gives me grief. For example, I have been practicing late at night for the past few weeks with no problems. However, this week i have been renovating a room which involved heavy sanding and gripping with my hands. Now after practicing guitar, i have pretty sore knuckles and joints that seem directly related to my picking practice that I do not feel when renovating. In this example, the added consistant strain of the renovating has caused guitar to be the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’. It definitly pays to look beyond your practice to prevent injury/strain.

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#9

Hi, thanks for sharing your experience, I tend to avoid categorically heavy lifting that involes objects that are unbalanced or stuff that forces me to stand in strange and unphisyological positions. I think that while recovering, I mean after playing, the skeletaltendonligamet structure is under a very thin equilibrium and we musn’t push it with uncotrolled weights or applicaions of torques and similir stuff. When I open jars, bottles even plastic wrappings I always take a great care in doing these movements, because if I screw them up, I find myself with a tingly feeling in my hands that bothers me as hell, that unconfortable feeling of somenthing out of place. My freinds and family mock me and say I’m drastic, but if you don’t know that itch, that feeling of tickle that ruins your mood, you can’t get it. Even using the mousepad screws up my hands.

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#10

I have noticed some guitarists in studios will shake their hand out a bit before going for a take. I think I saw a Paul Gilbert video where he did it. I think that it helps if after a anything repetitive, I encourage circulation by dropping my hands/arms and giving them a light and loose shake before playing again.

As for being careful in daily life as well as guitar, there is something called the ‘Alexander Technique’ that is meant to be really beneficial. It might be a good thing to check out. I would love to do it , but it is expensive…I had a drummer friend who had chronic RSI and had to give it up. With the Alexander Technique, he was able to eecover to the point where he could play guitar…

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#11

Hey thanks for sharing your experience, I’ll check out the alexander technique :wink:

#12

I worked through a case of carpal tunnel in my left hand. I believe it started because I was over working my hands by practing guitar a lot, using my left hand on the mouse all day at work, and I was also rock climbing a bunch. Now when I’m practicing I just make sure to stop regularly and also anytime I start feeling any strain or tension.

Here’s a couple techniques used by the rock climbing community.

When shaking out your hands, hold them over your head, then alternate above and below. Not sure why this helps but it does. Maybe something to do with blood flow.

When stretching, I was taught a really good one. Sorry I’m not savvy with the tech terms yet but I’ll try…

Spread your fingers out and hold your arm down and slightly away from your body, roughly vertical . Bend your wrist backward so your palm is roughly parallel with the floor, now rotate your wrist and arm back and forth as if you were turning a record player.

It took me a good year to get over my carpal tunnel. I did not start getting better until I said F it and started thrashing on it. I bought a 2 stroke motorcycle and I believe the vibrations coupled with the workout of riding is what helped me heal

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#13

Hey I really appreciate you sharing your experience with me, I’ll give a try to that record player technique :wink: I have plenty of non-musician friends that Invitend me rockcliming, I live in the Alps, but seeing their hands and fingers I’ve always said no, I’ll stick with swimming. When I work out and do stuff like pull ups, push ups, rings wheigts, I use wristbands. Also for push ups I use handles. For pull ups I tend to use the neutral grip, I mean I have two handlebars sticking out in front from the regular pull up bar. thanks

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