left hand hiatus
 

Hi All,

A few weeks back, I took a bad spill, while running to catch a subway. I tore muscle in my left shoulder, and after getting a couple of opinions I decided to schedule surgery right away. This happened last week Friday, and evidently went well. I have little pain, and I'm beginning to get a sense of how much worse it could have been. Nonetheless I know I'm in for many weeks in a sling/brace, icing frequently every day, and many hours of PT.

My left hand is my dominant hand, which makes everything a bit harder at the moment. But for the purposes of this post, it's most importantly my fretting hand, as I play "right-handed" (an absurd designation in my book, but a topic for another day).

So as most of us on this forum aren't spring chickens, I'm imagining a lot of you have experienced similar injuries, and I'm curious how you coped with this kind of setback. I'm not a professional musician, but I'm a deeply passionate everyday player. I'm wondering what to work on during this time, how to continue to grow...

One thing I'm particularly curious about is beginning to learn how to fingerpick. I'm a flat picker, have wanted to get around to this for a long time, and this feels like it might be a really good moment to give it a try. Are there any really basic beginner tutorials on YouTube that have been helpful? Other resources ??

Any experiences/strategies/exercises/etc. you all feel like sharing, I'm all ears, err, and one hand :)

Thanks,
Ian

Hopefully, your recovery will be better than mine. I had multiple injuries to my left hand, arm and shoulder from a motorcycle accident.Had 3 surgeries to my hand, elbow and shoulder. the most serious being the hand. This was in 2013 and I still cant play like I used to. I wont play outside my bedroom. The shoulder and elbow still give me trouble, pain wise, but the way they put my hand back together I just cant get it back on the guitar. I dont think the shoulder alone would be as detrimental, so I assume you will be fine, just go thru all the PT you can. My shoulder becomes a problem if I strap on my Les Paul and I cant sit and play without a strap, so that guitar will be in its case forever. Even with my acoustics I need to use a strap but being lighter they dont cause serious pain in my shoulder. Good luck with the recovery, you'll be ok.

In my experience with this type of issue it came down to how much I wanted to play or do certain things. I came back in a fashion but what I realized was that the same hopes, drives and dreams that got me started fifty some years ago are the same things that got me to come back. You either want it or you don't really.

I broke 4 fingers at work back in the 90s. My picking hand. Well.....I could hardly play for a couple of months all that well.


However.....I just kept it up and eventually everything kind of evened out.


I cannot speed pick very well and I think it is due to that in a way.


My hands now start to ache and such and sometimes it really affects how I play.


I truly believe you need physical therapy....if your not enrolled in it for your surgery. ..

Also the vitamin supplement called glucosamine is good for joints and such.

Maybe try that.

Your desire to persue your love for playing will also help drive you and make you heal faster


Good luck

Hi Ian,

After what my orthopedist described as a "pulverized collarbone injury" I purchased a Taylor GS Mini for the year long recuperation. He offered two options, a scar after surgery or I could opt for letting everything fuse naturally with the possibility of a permanent lump. I opted for the lump, but I was fortunate that everything returned to where it should be with no permanent lump.

Bottom line was the GT Mini allowed me to play, even fulfilling a couple of gigs that I had already committed to. The huge upside of this was that I became aware of how much I really loved smaller guitars and particularly the sound of them. That all happened around ten years ago and I have no desire to ever play larger guitars again.

Hi Ian,

In 2018 I had surgery to repair my right shoulder rotator cuff, which sounds kind of what you're going through. I had to sleep on my back, reclined slightly, with my right arm in a sling 24/7 (except when taking a shower) for six weeks, and since I'm a side sleeper this was VERY difficult for me. Physical therapy started after a few weeks and continued for maybe three months. After PT was done I continued to do the exercises at home for a long time, and this is extremely important. Strengthening those muscles and keeping the movement going is absolutely essential. Total mobility and strength returned and my arm/shoulder came back to normal. So, keep doing those exercises! As far as playing is concerned I was able to play after I could stop wearing the sling (pretty hard to put my arm around the guitar with it on). Since it's your left/fretting arm you might be able to start playing sooner since you won't have to embrace the instrument with that arm. Good luck with your recovery!

Jack

Having gone through several injuries myself over the years (shoulder, fretting hand), I think that you are smart to think about being mindful of both your healing and your guitar playing. I’m a singer songwriter so ended up writing a lot of lyrics when I had to take a 5 month break from guitar due to a fretting hand/finger injury.
I think that getting your strumming hand familiar with some fingerpicking patterns is a great idea. If you do an internet search of YouTube fingerpicking lessons, there will be some to choose from. The Travis pick is a great way to begin. As you heal and can start using your fretting hand again, you could also put your guitar in an alternate tuning and get some nice progressions going with only using one or two fingers.
Good luck and be patient with your progress.
Best,
Jayne

If it hurts, STOP
 

After my carpal tunnel surgery on my left hand (fretting hand) my doctor told me to take two months off of the guitar.

I asked him if we could make it one? He said OK, with the stipulation that if playing hurt I stop immediately. And don’t start again until it doesn’t hurt.

This seemed reasonable to me! And it worked. I am back to playing pretty well, and I am sure having fun doing so

Seems like a good advice for a lot of things in life. I am not a believer in no pain no gain.

Hopefully your recovery will go swiftly and completely!

Might be a good time to explore open tunings, and bottleneck and lap slide…

Hang in there!

Paul

In 2019, through a freak accident involving a "safety device" and poor reading on my part, a 0.040 hollow point bullet went through my fretting hand at the no. 5 metacarpal. Funny it's called a "boxer break" even though the bone was mostly disintegrated. Anyway, my hand doctor was amazing. He didn't assign me to OT/PT. He told me (once the wound healed) to play.

In the meantime, I tried open tunings. I bought a really good keyboard and worked on my right hand technique on that. My band actually had a big gig 3 days after it happened and I'm the rhythm guitar player. I played the keyboard for the gig.

Best of luck in the recovery.

Funny, the way my bone healed, I now actually can play better than before.

As a steel string fingerstyle player, I find the acoustic resources to be pretty shallow compared to what's available for classical players. You might want to look up classical beginner videos.

I'm very active and will occasionally hurt a finger (like last month). When you play fingerstyle you always have activities you can do with the right hand. I finally dialed in my tremolo last month when I couldn't use my left for 2 weeks.

I lopped off a piece of my left hand index finger about 13 years ago, while remodeling our bathroom. Put my left hand out of commission a good while.

I tuned a guitar to an open chord and went through the Giuliani arpeggio studies. It was absolutely fantastic picking hand practice.

I could probably stand to go through those again...with two hands.

+1 on therapy; not necessarily in person though. Go a few times or research online for a good set of movements by stage of recovery and do them!

A nut extender and a tone bar converted one of my guitars to a lap steel and I was able to use that pretty early in my fret hand recovery. Best of luck!

I am very sorry to hear about your mishap. I have broken my right hand (I had the boxer break, like the Yamaha guy poster from earlier in the thread), torn my right rotator cuff, and developed carpal tunnel somewhat. My advice is to give yourself time to heal before you pick up the guitar again. I have had to take as much as 3 months off before playing again. It's a bummer, and it takes a little while to get your chops back. Positive thinking goes a long way.

On the positive side, when I was able to play again after each injury, I found that my playing had changed a little bit, and I had sort of forgotten some patterns or voicings or ways of playing that had me in a bit of a rut, and I started playing new things, things I had not thought of previously, it was pretty interesting and positive for my playing.

Thank you all for your thoughts and well wishes !

It's encouraging to hear that most who responded suffered greater physical setbacks than I, yet you (and your pet metronomes) kept on tickin'... some even seemed to gain some advantage from the hurdles placed in their path, inspiring.

I'll start working on a timeline with my surgeon's team/PT starting next week. I'm curious what they'll say. And in the meantime, I'll focus on learning/refining righthand skills.

As for the suggestion to pickup lap slide, it's funny: I actually taught myself slide years ago before I started trying to play "regular"... but I haven't picked up my dobro for a few years, as I've been obsessively focused on learning how to play melodies and accompany my voice. It might be a moment to revisit my square neck, but I want to check with my doctor first, as even though I would be keeping my hand lower, the reach is about the same, and fast lateral motions that are more common (at least in my playing) to slide technique could be problematic right now... but it's definitely worth asking/exploring.