Why Injury Is No Excuse to Stop Practicing Guitar
By Janez Janežič
Have you just had an accident and hurt one of your hands?
Or maybe you overdid practicing and now your wrists are in pain?
While I can advise you to be more careful next time, I can also tell you that unless it's something serious, it's no reason to quit learning or practicing guitar.
I see that a lot with my students. They try to cancel their lessons because they have hurt a finger, or broken an arm. I always suggest them to come to the lessons anyway.
Why?
Because learning guitar is not one dimensional. Not everything you do, you do with your hands. A lot is happening inside the head.
Besides, if you hurt a finger, you still got plenty of fingers left to train. And if you hurt one hand, why not practice the other?
There are a lot of things you can do in the time of recovery to not only keep the skills, but also boost the progress on guitar. Let’s explore some of the concepts, and see if you can get some ideas yourself.
Work on the fretting hand skills
If you have injured your picking hand, you can focus on your fretting hand. There’s a lot of things you can do with just the fretting hand.
Yes, you can practice legato (hammer-ons and pull-offs), but you can also work on just the fretting-hand aspect of anything you play: chord changes, scales, licks, etc.
Fully focusing on just one hand is a very valuable aspect of progressing on guitar, even if you are not injured.
Work on the picking hand skills
Same goes for your picking hand. We might think the options are limited here, but just like in the example of the fretting hand, you can practice anything by fully focusing only on the picking hand. Moreover, this is the area where most of the problems are found for guitar players who want to play fast.
You can work on: alternate picking speed, directional picking patterns, inside picking, sweep picking, palm muting speed, finger picking, different rhythm patterns, etc. The options are virtually infinite.
Rhythm
Rhythm is the most important aspect of music. So why not take the valuable time, when your limbs need to rest, and work on this usually overlooked skill?
You don’t even need hands, you can tap your foot, sing the rhythm, click your tongue … you get the picture. 🙂
Fretboard knowledge
Learning fretboard usually takes a lot of time to fully master. It’s something you usually work on, when you are practicing scales, finding notes on guitar or even improvise.
But you can also do a lot with just a piece of paper. You can write out chord or scale diagrams, find notes, or challenge yourself to find new chord shapes, if you are more advanced. This is something I do a lot with my students, even if their hands are perfectly healthy.
Instead of using paper, you can also visualize things in your head. This will benefit your fretboard knowledge even more deeply. Merely by visualizing yourself playing guitar, you activate neural pathways that are also engaged during physical performance. This mental exercise can effectively enhance your ability to use your hands when you actually pick up the instrument.
Work on aural skills
Having a good ear is great! You learn faster, can learn songs by ear and are able to enjoy music better.
Working on aural skills usually require a lot of listening and singing. You can listen to your favorite songs, and try to imagine which chords are being played. Write them out, and then check your answers.
Or you can improve your skills by singing scales and arpeggios, much like singers warm up. You can start doing this at the piano, just pressing notes and try to sing them, or find a vocal warm-up routine on the internet and work from that (there’s plenty).
Study music theory
If you are serious about learning your instrument, then you know you will benefit greatly by knowing at least some of the music theory.
You can simply read books on that topic or watch instructional videos on that. The best thing to add to this is to write the things out yourself like: which notes are in the G major scale, how is the C major triad constructed, etc., and work out how to apply it to the guitar.
Write music
This one was my favorite when I injured my hands in the past. I always like creating music, and the best news is: you don’t need to play your guitar in order to write a song. Most of the times I would just use software like guitar pro, or VST instruments in DAW, to get my ideas out.
You can just work on your writing skills and maybe somewhere along the way you’ll get one good idea that might spark your next hit.
Conclusion
So, this is it. I’m sure there are plenty of other things you can work on while your hands are disabled. I hope this will get you started and encourage you to keep practicing, even though you may have a temporary setback.
It takes a lot more to play guitar and become a great musician than just wiggling your fingers. Good luck and safe recovery!
About The Author
Janez Janežič is a creative guitar player, songwriter, who also focuses on teaching the craft to his students. He puts a lot of effort into providing the best guitar lessons at najboljše učenje kitare v Dolenjski regiji, Slovenia.