Sore Guitar Fingers!

Begining the passage to success with your new guitar is a wonderful experience. The pleasure of choosing your first guitar be it electric, accoustic, bass or classical is only the outset of your guitar playing journey

Taking the leap that will turn your dreams of playing that wonderful instrument into a reality will need many hours of hard but pleasurable practice time that will create a close bond between you and your new guitar.

It is of course advisable to follow a structured teaching program for the quickest and best results when learning to play any instrument and your new guitar will be no exception.

In the early days of learning to play guitar students do occasionally find that they get very sore guitar fingers and that they can hurt!

The muscles in the hands have to alter and toughen themselves to facilitate the attitude and movement required to support the neck of the guitar and at the same time to place the fingers in the correct playing posture on the fretboard At the same time the fingers of the left hand need to be able to stretch laterally to cover the required frets and apply pressure to the guitar strings from that position, whilst the right hand is addressing the pick to the playing strings in the right position over an extended period of time as well.

Exercise routines to supple up and stretch the muscles and tendons of the hand will eventually enhance playing proficiency and reduce aching and cramp but it will take a few weeks rather than days. The pent up enthusiasm to get going has to be viewed against the reality check that it will take time to develop and maintain this hand strength.

Sports shops often sell devices to build grip strength which cost very little however they can be very effective if used regularly. Having a soft rubber ball in your pocket and squeezing it whenever you can through the day is an exercise which bit by bit builds grip strength too.

A very useful exercise that can be practiced anywhere is to put your hands together as if in prayer. Spread the fingers apart as far as possible and press the fingertips of both hands together and slowly push the two palms back together keeping pressure on the fingertips. This exercise will aid you in stretching your fingers across the frets of your guitar more easily. This is certainly a useful exercise to do before a practice session on the guitar. Your beginner guitar lessons will be the better for it.

A very frequent challenge for new guitar students is that the finger tips of the left hand develop cracks and calluses from pressing on the guitar strings. There are various opinions on how best to address this situation but the best is undoubtedly to avoid them in the first place. By keeping practice times quite short, perhaps fifteen minutes to begin with, and only quite gradually make them longer you will allow the finger tips a chance to toughen up ahead of ever becoming too sore. A small amount of surgical spirit regularly dabbed on to your finger tips will hasten the hardening of the skin for most people.

If you are unfortunate enough to have your fingers split then one remedy often put forward and which permits you to carry on playing is to seal the cracks in the skin with a substance like Dermabond or even superglue. However it is really far more practical if your fingers do begin to become sore to hold off a while and allow them to heal naturally before you play again

It needs a while for hands and fingers to become accustomed to playing the guitar so the rule is to have patience and practice often but practice in short sessions. They do say no pain, no gain. The lifetime of joy to be gained from sticking with it and mastering your guitar is worth a bit of short term discomfort!

So if you have your wonderful new guitar and an excellent course to follow there is absolutely nothing to stop you from achieving your dream of playing it!!