How To Make The Most Of A Guitar Injury

 By Michael Gumley

If you’re serious about guitar playing it’s inevitable at some point that you might get a guitar related injury at some point. As guitarists we’re prone to overuse injuries like tendonitis, carpal tunnel, tennis elbow and a host of posture related injuries. Fortunately, most of these injuries can be prevented by simply having good posture when you practice and being smart about how you do practice (like taking frequent breaks and NEVER, EVER pushing through pain when you play)

In the event that you do injure yourself and are forced to take anywhere from a few days to several weeks or months off of guitar, be disciplined and take the time off. Do exactly what the doctor says so that you can minimize your recovery time and don’t try to do 5 minutes here, and 5 minutes there because you will make it worse, I know because I did it and it cost me 2 years of my playing career.

I know from personal experience that not playing guitar Is the worst thing in the world. If you are ambitious and are striving to be the best you probably get grumpy when you don’t play guitar and feel like time not spent improving is wasted time. If this is you, I would like to share how I was able to still improve my guitar playing and musical abilities without being able to play guitar for a 2 year period. Hopefully your injury is no more than a 3 day rest period but in the event it’s longer, change your perspective and see it as an opportunity to improve other areas of your musicianship and continue to make progress there.

Learn Music Theory

If you can’t play guitar then an easy thing to do is work on your music theory. There are many great resources out there in the form of both textbooks and workbooks or even online resources that allow you to print of worksheets. Spending time increasing your understanding of how music works will have a positive effect on your playing once you do get around to playing guitar. You don’t even have to limit yourself to music theory, why not learn the history of a particular genre or try to find a biography of some of your favourite players. There is no lack of resources out there and every piece of knowledge you absorb will help establish you as a better musician.

Practice Your Ear Training

Another skill closely related to your music theory is your aural skills. Most guitar players never spend time developing their aural skills but even having basic training makes transcribing songs, identifying chord progressions and finding the right notes to play when improvising even easier. There are many great online resources for free and most of them are now gamified so you can have fun while learning. If you’re looking for a more structured course your local music store should have no shortage of resources.

Visualize Your Practice

Imagine yourself in your kitchen, imagine you walk to the fridge, open it up and get out a lemon. Imagine walking over to the wood cutting block, slicing the lemon in half and picking it up, now bite into the lemon and feel all the juice and pulp squish into your mouth, feel your teeth bite down and scrap all of the meat out and the sour taste as you swallow…

Is your mouth watering right now? Studies have shown that your brain can’t tell the difference between real experiences and imagined experiences. We can use this to great advantage by visualizing our practice and imagining ourselves playing in our minds eye.

An easy thing to do in the beginning is to just imagine one single string and to visualize where the natural notes are one at a time. Say the notes aloud “E, F, G, B, C, D, E” as you put your finger on them one by one and play all the way up the string. You can use this easy exercise to memorize your fretboard in your bed every night, and better still it works with chord shapes, arpeggios and scales.

Once you get the hang of visualizing you can use it to imagine yourself playing more complex ideas and eventually entire songs. You’ll begin to use this in your down time and travel time as a substitute for practice when you don’t have access to a guitar. It’s a great way to improve whether you are injured or not.

In Conclusion

If you find yourself injured it can be very easy to get down on yourself and slip into a bad mood. Instead use it as an opportunity to improve other areas of your musicianship and increase your skills in those areas. That way when you are able to come back to guitar you will have other skills and knowledge to complement your guitar playing abilities.

Michael Gumley is a guitar teacher based in Melbourne, Australia. Having had his own arm injury which required surgery and cost him two years of playing, he makes it his personal mission to help others overcome similar situations and continue to stay positive and make improvement through the course of their injury. If you are looking for the best guitar teacher in Melbourne or specialist advice on injury management and efficient practice, Michael is the man for you!