Playing guitar can be difficult. As a beginner, you have to suffer through sore fingertips. When you start playing barre chords, you need to reach new levels of strength and sensitivity to achieve a clear sound. And, any time you significantly increase your practice time, you may even experience fatigue in your arms or hands. Although these challenges are inevitable, they are, thankfully, temporary.
But if you’ve become accustomed to playing with excess tension or experiencing chronic, low-level discomfort, it’s time to change that! When you use too much muscle, you compromise not only your comfort level, but also your speed and tone. When you learn to release tension and come into alignment, you will not only resolve these physical issues, you will also free up more energy for learning and creative expression!
Check Your Guitar
Before you begin making changes in your playing, check to make sure that your guitar is as playable as possible. If pressing down on the strings is hard for you, it’s worth visiting a good guitar tech to make sure the neck is straight and your action isn’t too high. Also, be sure that the strings you use are light enough for both you and your guitar.
Relax!
Start with the tips in this article to prevent or eliminate tension and pain. It only takes a minute or two each day to stretch your arm and hand muscles and deepen your breath—and the benefits are priceless!
Take the Pressure Off!
Unless you have consciously practiced playing with minimum pressure, you are probably gripping the neck too hard. It’s understandable. As a beginner, it took a lot of work just to get a sound. As you progressed, your body began to know how and where to press on a fret to get a clear sound and consequently, less work was required. Unfortunately, at that point, you may not have been aware of how hard you were working, and so you neglected to make a shift to using less pressure.
Because excess tension is such a common problem, I developed a simple exercise to help students learn to play with minimum pressure. I recommend starting each practice session with this exercise. It is an awareness exercise—not a strengthening exercise—so you will be able to accomplish wonders in under a minute. (If you’re not in the Virtual Studio yet, you can join here and access this video and all the other tutorials in the Studio for free for a month.)
Mental and Emotional Tension
Excessive effort is not limited to the physical when you play guitar. This is where You & Your Guitar is your best ally. In addition to imparting essential principles of guitar playing, it will help you to assess your guitar goals and develop confidence in your ability to attain them. You’ll come to know yourself better and you’ll learn to recognize the unique ways you respond to learning, practicing, and performing. That awareness will help you make decisions about what you want from your playing and how you want to feel, enabling you to relax into the process and have more fun.
Still Need Help?
If, after trying these tips, it still feels like you are working too hard when you play, consider scheduling a consultation with me. I’ll be able to look at your guitar, your posture, and the way you use your hands and show you ways to bring more ease into your playing. You deserve it!
Thank you, Shelley. I’m so happy you’re experiencing this benefit. I live for this stuff!
Thank you for this article Charlotte.
Yes, in my lesson you could see I had a death grip on my guitar neck.
Just doing this pressure exercise once is mind blowing for me as a novice player! I cannot believe how little pressure I need to use to coax a pitch from the string. This is a game changer for my body mechanics.
As I am just starting my guitar journey, I can now avoid this ergonomic mistake. My arthritis developing hands thank you!
Shelley C