Originally Posted by: mblaideSorry to hear what happened. I hope it's nothing serious, but if it sticks around you may want to see a doc. I would say when you start playing again that you go slowly with some easy warm-up exercises for longer than you normally do. If you feel pain then stop for a while and try again. More pain, then maybe stop for the day.

If you can't play for a while then look into doing "mental practice":

http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/does-mental-practice-work/

I've had tendonitis in my achilles tendons and I can say that it takes time to go away and it's not worth "powering through"...you only make it worse.

The article on "mental practice" is quite good. I've done this without realizing what it was or that it was that beneficial. There are times where I'll go to bed at night after working on a challenging phrase of a solo on the guitar. I have found myself laying there, hearing the phrase in my head and picking apart the rhythm and visualizing exactly what finger goes where. I figure I'm lying there awake with the song buzzing through my head...might as well do something "productive". It's hard to say if it's the fact that I practiced it so much that night, or that I thought about it a lot afterwards, but inevitably by the next day, it comes much easier to me.