I was recently asked about how to avoid wrist pain as a musician. I’d like to address the issue of avoiding wrist pain because applying proper stretching technique can keep you from seriously damaging your arms and hands. It’s not only important to stretch before a gig but before you start doing some serious practicing.
There are a lot of online tutorials about how certain musicians stretch before a gig. I have my own method because I think a lot of stretching guides go a bit overboard. I don’t think it’s really necessary to go through a whole 30 minute stretching regiment just to get ready to play a show.
Last year I was on tour with Cirque Dreams and I was playing more than I’ve played in a long time. I was playing over and hour and a half on stage with only a maximum of 6 seconds in between songs just to change guitars. I was pretty much constantly playing while on stage. I was also practicing in my hotel room every night and going through the whole show set on my off days.
It got to a point where I had to wear a wrist brace on each forearm and hand because I was having wrist pain. Typically I would wear the wrist brace all day on my off day and then sleep with it on as well. By the time morning came around my wrists felt okay enough to play a show. I was a little concerned that I was going to do permanent damage to my forearms and hands from over doing my playing schedule.
Now, on this tour I’ve started to stretch my hands and arms before each show. I usually start doing this 5 minutes before we go on. By doing this I’ve not had any wrist pain or any problems. I brought some wrist braces with me for this tour and I’m glad I’ve yet to have to break them out.
So, whenever we get the 5 minute call before show starts I go into the wings of the stage and start my stretch routine. I don’t stretch my legs, back, or calves because I’m not an acrobat and I don’t have a lot of room to move on stage so it would be stupid to waste my time stretching that part of my body. I mean, come on.
I start off by stretching each hand. I take one hand and push the fingers of the other hand back towards my elbow very slowly.
Slowly I’ll push the fingers and palm backwards for ten seconds. I just pace back and forth while pushing those fingers and that hand back to stretch the muscles of the underside of my forearm while counting “1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3…..” and so on.
Then I’ll alternate and push my hand back the other way to stretch the upper part of the muscles in my forearm.
Doing these two motions: slowly pushing the hand, palm, and fingers backwards to stretch the muscles of the forearm – will get your wrist and forearms warmed up a bit. Don’t be too aggressive with this. Just start slowly, push back with ease until you feel the muscles being stretched. Once you feel that stretching sensation keep that pressure on while counting to ten.
Do that for both hands and both arms.
Once you’ve done 10 seconds of each you can stretch out your fingers. To do this I just stretch out each group of fingers for about about ten seconds.
As you can see I just slowly separate each couple of fingers by using my other hand. This will get your fingers limbered up.
Once you’ve done that to all your fingers on each hand shake it out. Just shake your hands and arms wildly for a few seconds.
After all that I massage each forearm. I use the thumb and forefinger of the other hand and rotate circles around my forearm like I’m turning on a faucet. I do this down the length of each forearm.
By doing this you’re kind of cooling down your arm. It’s like if you go to the gym and you do barbell curls. After your third set of curls your arms are going to be tired and you won’t be able to do as many as you originally started. So cool down your arms and relax them so that by the time you go out and actually play your arms will be loose and stretched and ready to tear it up. Once you know how long this whole stretching process will take you can then adjust when to start so that you can give your arms enough time to recoup and not be tired for all the stretching you’ve just done.
By doing this simple stretch routine you can avoid wrist pain and avoid any serious long term physical stress to your arms, wrist, and hands.
