Last few days Been getting really bad bad pain in the shoulder muscles (Both Sides) Deltoid muscle i think.
Noticed it when carrying shopping bags. Thing is i am totally relaxed when playing. more recently have been using the Ibanez which is alot heavier than my yamaha's have stopped using the strap and gone to lap playing to see if that helps but still feeling it.
Anyone else experienced the same thing.
I do sometimes play squished up in a single chair but have always done this before.
cheers?

Hey deltadiscos
I used to use ibanez JS series guitar when I first began lessons here. I was suffering from shoulder pain, picking hand and wrist pains too. For me, I figured out that it was the guitar body style the reason for pain. It was not very easy for me to pick the strings in that guitar probably because the strings were placed in the middle of the guitar and I had to stretch and sometimes curve my picking hand to get to the strings. The problem was bigger while practicing standing up and even bigger when i had to pick the higher strings.

I sold those guitars some months ago and bought a low end kelly shaped guitar and since then I have not felt any pain. The strings are closer to your body and not in the middle in this guitar so there is less wood you will have to go across while picking. I don't know if i made this clear, lol. Let me know.

This was my experience but I don't know if it is the same for you.

Cheers!!

When my fingers are in pain trills are the only things thhat make me feel better )-:...And if it still hurts I turn the metronome up,

But on a more serious note, If you still have issues in a say like 3 more days...Id go see a doctor pronto!

When I experienced issues with my trapezius, i realized that I had to start jumping on my moms treadmill for some sort of exercises other than sitting on muy ass all day doing sarod diddies and trills...

However, I also think that there is much to be said for letting go of fears and just practicing with rekless abandon. I think that all psysical ailments asside, it behooves us to adopt a childlike mindset of not knowing any better and just doing it.


This also does wonders for rekindling that sense of wonder that fisrt drew us to the damn thing...because after endless ages of trilling most need some help getting that mindset back!

Like Nick said, I'll get it if I don't do some other exercise. In fact, I'll put my forehand against the spine to "open up" around my shoulder-blade, lean that part against a doorpost and just make circular motions with my upperbody to simulate some massage. That tends to audibly release lots of knots. Normally I'll do jitsu and wrestling a couple of time a week and that helps prevent that tension build-up in the shoulders and trap-muscles, but when I take a week off from training, I'll get very achy playing in the sofa. (Funny enough after a few hours or pulling sleeves and stuff in jitsu, I oddly enough consistently come home and play much faster than on days with none of that workout -- maybe because the arms are tired and can't tense up any longer?)