You will find a lot of resources on correct guitar hand
positions when you scour the Internet. Unfortunately, there is lot of misinformation.
Here is a list of guitar hand position dos and don’ts that will help your
technique, improve your guitar playing and protect your physical wellbeing!
Relax!
Keep your fretting hand forearm and wrist in a straight
line. Don’t bend your wrist! Having a bend in your fretting hand wrist puts
strain on the tendons in you wrist, which can cause tendinitis when you
practice a lot. You want to make sure you’re not putting any unnecessary strain
on the muscles and tendons in your forearm. Tensing up while playing guitar
will make you sound tiny, nasally, and cramped up. In addition: your fretting
hand and arm will get tired faster. Loosen up! Holding a guitar is not a
struggle.
Stretch!
All top players stretch when they are engaging in
physically demanding practice activities, so why wouldn’t you? When you’re not
used to playing bar chords and you feel like your arm is about to fall off,
stretch! When you’re doing intense, repetitive technical exercises to improve
speed, dexterity and strength: stretch! Not a bad idea to stretch a bit before
you practice intensely. You should surely stretch during those practices.
Again: when you feel your hand and fore arm getting really tired, stretch
before you start feeling discomfort, then continue practicing or practice
something else to give your hand some further rest. How do you stretch? Keep
your (fretting hand) arm straight (don’t bend at the elbow) in front of you,
your hand open, the inside of your hand facing forward: like you’re signaling
“STOP!” Then with your picking hand: gently pull your fingertips of your
fretting hand towards you. Keep that pull for about 30-40 seconds. Other really
good stretch: keep the arm of your fretting hand straight without bending at
the elbow. Rotate your forearm so the inside of your fretting hand is facing
up. Close your fingers into a fist, without pressing hard: just simply close
your fingers. Then reach over with your picking hand, grab your fretting hand
fist and gently and carefully pull your fist towards you, without bending at
the elbow. These 2 stretches work both sides of your arm. Do them often when
you’re practicing physically demanding exercises.
Always
Play With a Strap
Do you want to use your hands to play guitar with them,
or do you want to use them to hold the guitar? That questions pretty much sums
it up: when you play without a strap, part of your hand energy and attention is
directed towards having to hold your guitar. With a strap, your guitar holds
itself and you can use your hands to actually play guitar. Not only that: you
also don’t have to worry about your beautiful guitar dropping on the ground.
Rest
Your Thumb On The Back of The Guitar Neck.
As opposed to: pressing (really hard) against the back of
the guitar neck. Try it out: play chords without your fretting hand thumb
touching the back of the guitar neck! It’s usually pretty surprising for most
people to found out that you don’t need your thumb to play guitar. This being
the case: go figure how much energy you waste then if you press hard on the
back of the neck with your thumb. You don’t even need your thumb to get the job
done. Just rest your thumb against the neck. You’re only wasting your power and
energy when you push against the back of the guitar neck.
Keep
Your Fretting Hand Rounded!
Your fretting hand should always look as though you are
holding a bubble or a baseball. The only exception to this might be if you’re
playing a bar chord. Your fingers should be curved (exactly as your hand
naturally is in a relaxed state) with your fingertips perpendicular on top of
the guitar strings. There should be no “angles” or strain on any joints in your
hand and fingers.
Keep
your thumb straight
Very often guitar players bend their thumb of their
fretting hand behind the guitar neck. Don’t do it: keep your thumb straight.
This is the fix for guitar students who complain that their forearm starts
hurting after a while of fingering chords. More often than not, the solution is
in straightening out the thumb. Your guitar is basically your “tool” that you
pick up to create music with. You would never pick anything up with your thumb
bent, because your hand is not designed to function that way. So trying to play
guitar with your thumb bent goes against the grain of how your hand is designed
to function. The bent thumb results in added tension in the forearm muscles,
which leads to the forearm pain guitarists feel after a while.
Conclusion:
The position of your fretting hand is important
for various reasons: better sound, better technique, less strain, better
performance, more control, more endurance, physical & medical precaution
preserving your hand, arm and wrist, and having more fun playing more at ease.
And that is exactly what I would like you to do now. Enough reading: go have
some fun, jamming guitar while improving your hand position.
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