Repetative Stress Syndrome?

Hey Gang,

Bit of a long shot here - I have a problem with my left hand/fingers.

When I wake up in the morning my left hand fingers are too stiff to make a fist, or even half a fist, fingers feel like sausages. After ten minutes or so of warm-up they become more relaxed. There is some continuing discomfort and immobility in various joints as I continue to play. They stiffen up again after playing after about an hour.

This isn't just after gigs, I guess everyone has stiff fingers after gigging, but every day. Rest is definitely not the answer, I broke my wrist recently and didn't move my fingers for about three months but this made no difference - I'm hoping that someone out there in GT-land may know of a pharmaceutical product (or anything else for that matter) which may help. I take Glucosamine which is supposed to loosen up joints but this doesn't seem to make any difference.

Any suggestions please?

John

Hi John... :)

I've had some trouble with my hands recently as well, sounds like your problem is a little different to mine but I'll offer the thought anyway.

I had pain in my left hand, probably tendonitis - just burned like hell without me doing much, and the tips of my fingers on the fretboard felt like electric shocks. Anyway, at the suggestion of a friend I went and got accupunture. I wasn't too sure about it, but I can't argue wih the result - I didn't play for around a month, and even now I'm not going too mad, but I am back up to speed. It seems I might have trapped a nerve or something...

I have some tension in my right elbow as well, and am going back again to have that worked on over the coming weekend. I'm no expert, but maybe you should be looking toward the products/techniques available to treat arthritis? Physio perhaps?

Sorry I can't be more help, I guess all I'm saying is that the solution may not be what you expect - accupunture didn't even come to my mind... but it worked.

As a thought, does soaking your hand in warm water help at all? It's not a solution but it helped me keep going while looking for a better answer - I don't advocate playing through the pain, but I have to pay the bills, so I had to keep goiong as best I could...

I hope that's of some help... at the very least, you're not alone - a fair number of the GT guys have had issues like this, and so far we've all been lucky enough to get past them.

Sounds like you have a real problem. I wrote an article about tendonitis a while back so maybe this will help you even if you have something else:
http://www.randyellefson.com/guitar/articles/recording/got_tendonitis.aspx