Starting the journey to learn & master your new guitar is an exciting adventure. Whilst the selection and buying of that first guitar, whether it is a complete electric set up or beautiful new acoustic guitar has been a memorable experience for you, the time has now come to start playing it!
You will have many happy and possibly a few frustrating hours in close company with your new guitar as you begin to turn that vision of success in playing guitar from a fiction on into a reality.
PRESSURE SORES
Oftentimes beginners to the guitar find quite early on that they are faced with their first challenge when they realise that learning to play guitar can give you sore guitar fingers, and it can hurt!
The muscles in the hands have to adapt and strengthen themselves to become comfortable with the posture and movement needed to hold the neck of the guitar and to place the fingers in the correct playing position on the fretboard. Then the lateral spreading of the fingers of the left hand demanded in moving between the guitar frets, and of the right hand correctly holding the pick over a lengthy period of time has to be got used to as well.
Exercise routines to strengthen and stretch the muscles and tendons within the hand will eventually enhance playing proficiency and reduce aching and cramp but it will take a matter of weeks rather than days. It has to be acknowledge that there is a period of adjustment to see through as you develop and maintain hand strength and it should not dampen early eagerness to learn to play the guitar.
Sports shops often sell gadgets to build grip strength that cost very little but can be very effective if used regularly. Also having a soft rubber ball in your pocket and compressing it as an exercise throughout the day will gradually builds grip strength too.
A useful exercise to strengthen tendons in the fingers is to put the hands together as you would in prayer. Open the fingers apart as far as possible and press the fingertips of the two hands together and gradually push the two palms back together keeping pressure on the fingertips. This helps stretch the tendons in the fingers and make it easier to open the fingers apart. This would be a easy method of warming your hands up ahead of every practice session.
For many students starting out with guitar lessons the tips of their left hand can become sore or even split from pressing on the guitar strings. There are all sorts of opinions on what is the best way to address this occurrence but the best is surely to avoid them in the first place. By starting off with very short practice sessions and building the session length bit by bit, the ends of the fingers have a chance to toughen before they ever get to split. A useful tip is that a little surgical spirit regularly applied to your finger tips will accelerate the hardening of the skin for most people.
If your fingers do split then one remedy often suggested and which helps you to continue playing is to seal the cracks in the skin with a product like Dermabond or even a little superglue. However it is probably far more realistic if your fingers do begin to become sore to hold off for a while and permit them to heal naturally before you play again
It is advantageous to keep your early practice sessions short as it will not only give your hands and fingers a chance to acclimatise to playing the guitar but you will in the end find you learn more from them anyway. They do say - no pain, no gain and the lifetime of satisfaction to be gained from staying with it and mastering your guitar is definitely worth a bit of short term discomfort
Sore Guitar Fingers! PRESSURE SORES
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