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Hello guys,
it's been a very long since I was on this page, there happened many things. Firstly, I got into jazz studies in Dresden, Germany, at a very nice public school (against many others, because they usually have only one to two places every year). This is so great for me and I really want to practice and play as much as I can, I will also do much sport (swimming&running), but I hope that I can get to 6-8hrs practice a day (more on the weekend as far as I have theory, audiation and other classes during the week which reduces the possible practice time.)
So now to my question: Maybe it's not even a question, I rather want to gather and get all your information and opinions upon this topic and it's mainly about back/neck health due to many hours sitting down to practice. What are your habits, what do you do against it? I usually stand up after an hour or so and strech a few times and get back to work - I mean, this is possible cause I am very young right now, but I really want to save my body. I started to notice that the muscle of my left wing shoulder is sometimes getting quite tense...
I am looking practically for any tip you have: Yoga or other sports, special chairs or which chair, I've seen those products that help you reposition the guitar in a healthier way - I need all this stuff. I am going to practice 8 hours a day and don't want to ruin my physical body like many did!
Hope you understand my "problem" and collaborate! And maybe even you find new things here among other opinions! Thanks in advance for helping out.
Cheers, have a great time.
Horszt
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10-04-2017 12:39 PM
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I think your concerns are real but your practice plans for eight hours a day and more on weekends are unrealistic.
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anything you do for hours at a stretch, day after day will eventually takes its toll..no matter how ergonomic it may have initially been...
best thing to do is change postions.. formal sitting, standing, or just on the couch or leaning against the wall...haha...break the repetition up..even changing the strap length helps...
and when you do feel discomfort, put it down and rethink...
exact repetition is what does you in..things like your computers trackpad, or your car steering wheel positioning..before you know it your wrists hurt (carpal ts)...
move things around!
cheersLast edited by neatomic; 10-04-2017 at 05:21 PM. Reason: sp-
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Unrealistic? I thought he said he was already doing that. I might have misread. But I’ve know a lot of people who practiced 6-8 a day, myself included. Not unrealistic at all. Why???
Originally Posted by pauln
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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ps- a lifetime of guitar posture
the mighty jim hall!!
cheers
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The only suggestions I would make is to gently work up to high hours or you will hurt yourself. It’s like suddenly deciding you’re going to spend two hours a day in the gym lifting as heavy weights as you can, but haven’t done it before. You’re going to injure yourself seriously. I’ve had students who ended up in a cast for over a year with carpal tunnel. Against my instructions they went from an hour every other day to 6-8 hours a day every day.
Stretches and standing are good. I’d use the time on reading without a Guitar In your hands. Listening. Transcribing. Doing a lot of things that don’t require a lot of heavy fretwork while you’re building up your endurance.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by henryrobinett; 10-05-2017 at 10:59 AM.
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Yoga is great, maybe look into Alexander technique. The amount of effective practice you can do every day is as much or more tied to the amount of time you can concentrate as it is to physical limitations. 45 minutes is long enough without a break. If your mind/concentration or muscles, joints, tendons are blown out after 6 hours, it is beyond foolish to continue. Watch yourself with sports too; three hours of intense exercise of best followed by about 3 hours immediate rest. Playing guitar as soon as you've showered and dressed is not rest. In short, do as much as you can, not as much as you want to write down in a log book. Congratulations on getting into the program!
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A lot of good suggestions here. I will add that once you feel discomfort stop playing until the discomfort goes away. For some reason my fret hand pinky started hurting at the tip a few months back. I had to stop playing for 3-4 days. That was after I figured out that playing without using my pinky just wasn't me and I wasn't enjoying it.
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I didn't know till a couple months ago there were a lot of free yoga videos on Amazon Prime. Youtube too. One I found is more physical therapy than yoga but it works wonders for neck and shoulders. I have a problem with my left shoulder.
I gave finger-style/classical guitar a shot for a few years and my upper back and neck were killing me. Your shoulder can ride up because you're not relaxed.
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I'm just a hobbyist, but I've played a lot of sports.
1.Use a strap. The Jim Hall picture pretty much shows what NOT to do...hunched over. Find some YT videos of Joe Diorio or Joe Pass. They play with a much more classical position, and use a strap for consistent placement.
2. Warm up, and stretch before playing. There are classical guitar stretches by various guys on YT.
3. Learn to play with lights out, or with your eyes closed, and focus just on the sound. You might find this eases the tension a lot. (I once had a teacher who was practicing for the Thelonius Monk competition at the Kennedy Ctr. He'd been practicing like crazy, and was kind of burnt. He was playing a piece, and I had him play, and then went over and turned out the room lights so it was completely dark....his playing got more fluid, and relaxed. I think you concentrate better without the visual distraction, and can actually play faster.)
4. Think about symmetrical (complementary) muscle usage--the "Ben Hur" concept. Ben Hur, when he was a galley slave, requested the galley ship overseer, to switch him to the other side to equally develop his muscles. (YOU don't have to play left-handed, but think about reversing positions, even once an hr., and you can prevent asymmetric contortions.)
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this here covers some things about the left hand:
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My emphasis was really on the mental side - focusing on learning as much as possible, not time playing. I have no doubt some have worked up to long practice sessions by being gradual and very careful, but I see many others telling the tale of damaging themselves - a tough lesson to learn the first time, but really devastating if it occurs during an academic music program. Originally Posted by henryrobinett
goldenwave77's suggestion about playing in the dark is interesting because it makes looking at your left hand irrelevant. Think about it; when you practice for an hour looking at your hand, you are turning your head to your left and basically holding it there for an hour... a lot of people that think their neck pain comes from the strap, or chair, or posture are really just feeling what happens when you turn your head and hold it there for an extended period time.
This is why some guitarists like to stand to stage left when performing; rather than standing stage right and sighting down their guitar neck to watch both their hand and the other musicians (with their head turned to their left all night), they instead stand stage left so they must keep moving their head left to check finger position to right to check the band for communication.
Similarly, guitarist music readers may put the music to their right so they keep their head moving back and forth (and so learn how to instantly re-establish their visual position in the score).
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My two cents
Posture.
Classical guitar posture, at least in the upper body, is important. Use a strap, guitar neck angled up, sit up straight, don't hunch over, keep your elbow out.
Play standing up some of the time, don't always sit.
Conditioning:
In addition to your swimming - do some "core" exercises - back and abs
Stretch and stay loose:
Get up every 30-45 minutes to stretch and walk around a bit, not every 60 minutes.
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I've seen a LOT of kids sidelined for weeks, even longer, when doing intensive exercises for hours at a time. Each body is different, and some can. I, for one, can't. I feel good practicing, I feel a little stress in my left hand, I finally get that chordal voicing that was eluding me, I practice it so I don't lose it, the slight pain is overshadowed by the endorphin rush of playing seemingly effortlessly and the next day... BOOM! I'm praying that the pain or limited mobility is not permanent. Meanwhile 5 days of gingerly laying of the guitar has more than undone what I gained. Originally Posted by henryrobinett
Around music schools, I see this a lot. Be wise. It's not worth crossing that line. And you don't see it coming.
David
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Good observation. I had a daughter who was born with a torticollis (sp?)---a knotted neck muscle that caused her head to twist slightly to one side. My wife, a physician, picked it up quickly, which was fortunate because misalignment of the head in an infant can cause the optic nerve wiring in the brain to develop improperly---with all sorts of ramifications. We had to "force her" to twist her head to one side for about a year. This was done by holding her to one side---placing her bottle to one side, having her sleep on one side, etc. After about 10 months, the thing worked itself out. Originally Posted by pauln
Biological systems try to "equilibrate" themselves, if they're misaligned...or really to adjust to the misalignment. My father had one leg that was shorter than the other...and his opposite hip would work itself back, and mess up his back, as the body tried to "correct" the asymmetry. After a bunch of trips to chiropractors and back specialists, they figured it out, and gave him a heel lift that cured the problem.Last edited by goldenwave77; 10-18-2017 at 07:53 AM.
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Great suggestions. I play a lot in the dark so to speak. I notice a lot less tension build up. I also used to string up an old classical left handed and would noodle around on it, but I actually play right handed. However, thinking and playing left handed helped me progress right handed quicker. I also used to practice cursive handwriting left handed in reverse from right to left. It is really funny how those exercises help. Maybe not for everyone, but they did help me. I almost feel like I should be doing those kinds of things now because it was 30 years ago when I did them. Originally Posted by goldenwave77
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One of the most common problems is OOS (occupational overuse syndrome). I havent had a student suffer this in years (although some of them are practicing hours a day), because having been a victim myself which cost me almost a year without playing - Im super aware of the symptoms and try and instil preventative habits. OOS for guitarists is often catalysed by tension in the neck and shoulders which causes fatigue in the muscles. That in itself isnt such a big issue if you rest and let the pain or discomfort subside.
The big problems occur when one decides to keep going - I wrecked the tendons in my left forearm after a 5 hour practice session trying to learn some difficult notated stuff for a concert - and trying to ignore the twinges under pressure - and that was that.
The principles of not using too much tension as a controlling force , breathing,circulation and posture are all related. Any formative exercise I give the students has to be played slowly with attention on tension in the shoulders, wrists and of course the back.
Sometimes I'll make students use a foot stool to correct something postural - and I tell all of them that relinquishing control via tension will probably make them sound like they suck (for a bit) - which is the hardest thing for most of the youngsters to buy into , but is the surest way to develop real control.
JIm Hall used to emphasise the importance of having warm hands. Cant emphasise the importance of circulation here.Practicing in the cold, or not warming up properly puts one at some risk - mainly because circulation is the great maintainer and healer of delicate tissue such as tendons.
Swimming is a great way of keeping healthy , and one of the few exercises that I could do after my injury. It stopped the muscles from wasting as I had to avoid alot of other use for the arm -which isnt great either!
I stopped playing because the injury was so severe I could barely lift a cup of tea, but sometimes if its just a niggle it can be just be a question of going easier - changing to a lighter gauge string etc. Stopping altogther is the last resort when things get serious.
Oh - and if you get (as in my own case) stuck typing on a computer for hours and hours a day - this is a dynamite combination with over-practicing - in both of these its important to remember to rest. Added to that - lugging a heavy amp by hand up or down stairs as so many club players have to doesnt help either. My gigging rigs have melted away over the years to 15 watt tube combos or a little cab and an AI head...Last edited by gator811; 10-06-2017 at 02:28 AM.
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+1 on these! Originally Posted by Jazzstdnt
Your brain and body need a rest if you're trying to learn something! The Formula: 45 min of work, 15 min of rest/anything else! You will retain more information, and your body will like you.
Enjoy school!
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It should be noted that the pics of Jim Hall had hunched over like that are around the time of (?before/after) major back surgery on an 80 year old man. I believe the last few years of his life, he did whatever he could do to continue playing.
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Precisely the reason why I refuse to learn how to sight read better. Originally Posted by gator811
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