Tension in fretting hand

Can anyone help? I have been taking lessons for a couple of months now and practice 1 hour every day on finger excerises and pentatonic minor scale. amouth other things with a mwtronome . I have a electric Les paul Studio and want to lear to play older type country lead guitar I have some pain and tension in my wrist and fore arm mostly and may be this is normal for a while and does anyone know about how long it should last? :mad:

With guitar, the old adage "No Pain, No Gain" does NOT hold true. You can cause yourself some serious damage if you continue to play after your wrist and forearm become sore/tight. What I do is play until I feel my wrist or whatever getting tense/sore and then I stop for a while.. like 30mins or so.. if the tension is still there after I pick it up again, I immediately put the guitar back down again. Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) is real and can cause permanent damage and in some extreme cases, temporary, and in even more extreme cases, permanent paralysis of those muscles.

Now of course when you are starting out, it's going to hurt your fingertips of course.. but this is not muscle strain.. this is just your fingertips getting used to holding down the strings. Slowly, over time, your hands, wrists and arms will get stronger and you will be able to sustain longer playing sessions.. don't over do it.. it's just not worth it. 30 to 60mins a day is more than enough when you're starting out. My friend at church studies music at university and he HAS to keep playing even when it hurts a lot of the time. Recently he has been forced to take a semester off because of RSI.

Have you spoken to your teacher about it? It could be down to hand position and posture in general. Light's right though - I know way too many people who ended up with tendonitis (myself included) or carpel tunnel etc.

If it hurts, stop... or maybe just break your exercises up so you're not just running up and down scales for an hour... do 20 mins alternate picking practice, then 20 mins on chords, then 20 mins improvising over tunes - whatever... If you do the same thing over and over for an hour you're likely getting bored and maybe not getting as much out of it as you could.

Worth speaking to your teacher about though so he can take a look at your posture while playing - or you could try playing in front of a mirror.