Pinky finger locking

[Mediocre Dragon]

Hello. I am very new to guitar, and one of the problems that I have run across in learning is that the second knuckle of my pinky finger seems to lock up when I put enough pressure on it to press a string. I am wondering if this is a hand strength problem or something else. Anyone out there know how to fix it, or if not, make it less frequent. To kinda give you an idea of what it does, it makes my pinky form the shape of an L, and admittedly, after practicing for a while, it gets kinda painful in the joints. I am learning on an acoustic with steel (I think) strings. Also, while I am at it, is there any cautions for me on how long to practice as a beginner, as I haven't formed the callouses on the tips of my fingers yet, or can I just practice until I am finished? Thanks for your help!

Bryan

[gck]

pain -> stop immediately, see a doctor if pain persists for longer, etc... Pain is your body's way of saying: Stop, you damage me!!

For me, it was important to practice the pinky very gently: I did an exercise called "mark and press": choose your favorite fret and favorite string (doesn't matter for this). Next, hold your pinky finger so that it gently touches the string. Then press done, just as strong as you need to in order to get a clean sound. Repeat this.

The pinky is definitely the weakest finger. Search the forum for "pinky" etc.., there are lots of threads about that topic so I'm sure you will find exercises. Also, the "Misc. Wisdom" -> "Time Machine" section at cyberfret.com contains lessons with cool left hand exercises.

[cyberfret]

I see this a lot in my private lessons. This is going to be a little hard to describe in words, but here it goes. There are a few reasons why this is happening, and one or all may be the reason for your problem.

First has to do with your over all left hand position. If you are playing with your pinky, you need to keep your thumb in the middle of the back of the neck...approximately between your 1st and 2nd fingers. You will bring your thumb higher for various reasons.....like bends. But when your thumb is higher, your 4th finger becomes harder to use. If you were to look at your hand in a mirror as you are playing, it should look symmetrical. Most people that have the trigger picky problem have that side of there hand too low. That means that there should be an equal distance between where your first finger attaches to your hand and the neck of the guitar.....and where your 4th finger attached and the neck of the guitar. Having your 4th finger side too low causes your 4th finger to be too straight. Your 4th finger should be curved like your other fingers.

Take a look at the lesson on basic left hand position to help.
http://www.cyberfret.com/first-fret/left-hand-position/index.htm

In addition, you may have a week joint in your 4th finger. Therefore it collapse backwards too easily. Hold your left hand in front of you at stomach level....without your guitar. Your palm should be facing you, and your fingers should be curved....but just naturally. Take your left hand thumb and touch the tip of your left hand picky.....again your pinky should be curved. Now apply slight presser on your picky. Just slight pressure, these are very small muscles and you will injure yourself if you treat this exercise like power lifting in the gym. Now with the pressure on your 4th finger, slowly straighten your 4th finger until your reach the point where it wants to collapse backwards. Stop before it collapses...the curve your 4th finger again slightly. What you want to do is work the muscles right at the point where it is collapsing backwards.

As far as practice. In the first couple of weeks you want to practice between 20 minutes and a half hour per day. Then you can slowly increase the practice over time. It is bad to jump in and play 3 hours per day when you first start. And even when you eventually build up to that, those hours should be spread out, and you should take breaks and stretch your arms. The key is consistency. Practice everyday, and avoid practicing marathon sessions a couple of times a week.

--Shawn

[eische]

:rolleyes: I guess, I have to add something very different to that:
@Mediocre Dragon: Does that happen only while playing guitar or in other cases a well? - like when you file your nail on the pinky and have it to long in the same position???????? - that is, what occurs on my finger. (another hint for that is that could bent the last section (and only that) of the finger towards your palm at will). And it's a general problem - @cyberfret that has nothing to do with strength (the pinky was always my strongest finger) nor with position.
I have that problem with all of my junctions in my body and I know it's a very common »desease« (it's why I have to change sitting or standing position very often for else it would hurt - on this one @gck: if I would stop everytime something inside my body hurts, I would have to stop living).

So maybe you have a similar problem: The pinky snaps into different positions like straight or bent in the last junction without a smooth movement. And if it stays bent too long, it's stuck there (only to be moved by the other hand) and hurts.
I had a problem with that while playing (and still have sometimes), but I discovered that my hands just have to be warm enough so the junctions work better.

Make sure that your hands are really warm before you pick up the guitar. Bent all of the junctions in all possible directions (always to the point where it's slightly hurting) and keep the temperature of the little one in mind, because it's the one to cool out most quickly.

[Mediocre Dragon]

Ummmm... you asked if it happened when my finger was in a position for a long time... Like when I filed my nails. Well, I don't file them b/c I have this bad habit of biting them off. And I really have never kept my fingers in a sustained position before now. So, to answer your questions, I don't know. Thanks for all your help, guys and gals. I'll keep your suggestions in mind. :)

[gck]

Originally posted by cyberfret

As far as practice. In the first couple of weeks you want to practice between 20 minutes and a half hour per day.
--Shawn

Uhm, I just wanted to add that when I began playing guitar I started with approx. 2 hours of constant practicing (sometimes even 3-5, but at least 2 every day) and have constantly done so in the past 3 1/2 months: I think that the lots of practicing build up technique pretty quickly and I do not have pain or other problems with my fingers. Maybe, that's because I do also play basketball a lot (strengthens the hands) and that I have played other instruments where you use your fingers intensively since I was 7 (i.e. piano and violin)...
Basically, I think you should practice as much as you want to and as long as your physical constitution allows you to! But I'm neither a doctor nor a guitar teacher, so I might be wrong. Would be interested in what Shawn thinks about this!

@eische: What exactly do you mean by "disease"? Do you think you have a real illness or birth defect in your junctions or just that you just have very flexible joints? For example, I have a friend who can also move the last section of the pinky towards the palm without moving anything else, she can also do a lot of those "snake (wo)man" tricks like bending her back/arm/legs/everything-she-has-attached-to-her-body-without-being-sexual-here a lot. She can also bend the last sections of all her fingers backwards to a right angle!! However, that's normal, some people are more flexible than others! Don't be too concerned, it's definitely no disease. Girls/woman ARE more flexible than men!

About the pain thing: pain is a reaction of our body that should warn us when we damage ourselves: if it didn't hurt, you would probably burn your hand off by accidently reaching into a candle flame. BUT this hurts, so you will quickly draw your hand back. Pain is something you should take very seriously, I know that less from playing instruments but from sports (basketball). In the beginning, there might be little pain, just a small warning! Pain ALWAYS results in something bad if ignored! So examine your pain, why is it there, what are you doing wrong, is it an inflammation etc... Believe me, if somebody would have told me this when I was 12, I probably wouldn't have had to refrain from playing basketball for over a year because of knee problems! And that's almost 6 years ago now and still it hurts when I put a lot of weight on it!!

[cyberfret]

gck....as far as practice time, what you did is fairly dangerous. I would not suggest that approach for most people. But being in good physical shape, especially if you do some general upper body strength training would lower your risk of injury. But you really do need to work up to practicing for longer periods. It might not be a problem for some people......in the same way that someone who smokes 4 packs of cigarettes every day may live to be 100 and not develop lung cancer. But you have a higher risk of injury when jump right to playing 3 hours per day. You are developing some small muscles.

But you do have to think of playing the guitar like a sport. You need to stretch your muscles before you play. You need to take breaks. You need to strengthen the muscles around the ones that you are actually using to play.....those are the ones that often get injured. So just keep in good shape, and be careful :) To many of our fellow guitar brothers and sisters are lost to injury everyday. But it sounds like you understand the danger of pain, and will not let what happened to your knee happen to your hands and arms.

--Shawn

[gck]

Yes, it is so important that you can interpret the signals your body gives. When you are in a sports team, your trainer will definitely tell you about the dangers of ignoring pain! Unfortunately, not everyone has this benefit.

So, whenever you do something that hurts, stop. There always is a reason why it hurts! There too many people out there who say "hard (wo)men don't feel pain" etc.. but it's no fun once you have develloped are really nice inflammation in a a destroyed junction: that's what happened to my knee (I can't express it in English correctly, the problem was that the thing that covers your bones at the junctions was rubbed off and in addition, the junction got infected by bacteria which resulted in a very painful inflammation. The consequences were two visits at the surgeon with an additional week in hospital, a month in which I could hardly walk and another year until everything was ok again. But sometimes, it still hurts, especially when lots of pressure is applied to the knee, like when jumping etc..)

The tricky thing is that it's not like BOOM - terrible pain, but it starts with a neglectable feeling of discomfort which slowly devellops to pain, and at one point, you can't move any more...

So please be careful!

[Dimitrivich]

...or you could be double-jointed...which is a problem that I have...if so, just keep practicing...and pay more attention to your pinky. It's not so much as being weak, just not trained.

[eische]

@gck it's both a birth defect that leads directly into a very high flexibility on the one hand (I know I'm not able to get tendonitis for example) and pain in all sorts of intensities if holding a position too long on the other. By saying desease I just ment that it is an extremely common thing. Like from all persons I ever came to know a little closer around 60 percent had these symptoms.

on the girl/boy thing: well, maybe we are more flexible, but men are more often suffering a thing that in german is called »gicht« (my dictionary is so old, that I'm not sure wether it is correct - gout????) and could cause similar problems in the junctions especially in the fingers.

now the pain one: in the mail directly answering me you described just another sort of pain (by reflex and very strong), but luckily you added something different in your answer to cyberfret:
watch out what your body is telling you - yessssss!!!!!
But that doesn't exclude pain and sometimes it's healthy to feel some pain. So in this case: if you stretch consciously and slowly pain marks the border of your abilities - the one you may want to push further. And if you want to improve that (as an old sportsman I shouldn't mention to you - and by the way I danced semi-professionally for about 20 years) you definitly shouldn't stop as soon as it hurts. You just hold on the pain a bit before relaxing again and next time the pain will start at a later point.
I may have put it a bit too directly at you, but I just thought that your replay could cause a bit of an over-reaction. I mean we all live with our bodies, we have listened to it's speeches for all our lives and know our pains in it very well: if my head aches, I know I should eat, if my neck hurts I know, I have mishold it somehow in addition with maybe wet hair and a cold breeze - all of that hurts, and is far from dangerous but normal life. If I would always call the doctor for some of that - good night.

[gck]

yes, "pain" is a very wide generalization for feelings of discomfort. I would describe the "pain" you feel when stretching your body after a sports workout more as a "discomfort" than pain. If it turns into really strong pain, you stretch too hard. That is also reason why stretching should never involve using any other force than your muscles' to stretch (for example, many people use momentum to stretch, others have people pull their arms etc...). Which is not good because you do not have any control over the movement if it doesn't come from you i.e. your muscles.

However, you've been a professional dancer so you definitely know all this. However, unlike you and me, most people have never really been involved into sports and therefore do not know so well about their bodies. "If it hurts, it makes me stronger!" is a common misbelief, where people try to stretch their bodies 'till they've tears in the eyes. "The more I'm exhausted after training, the better" is also dangerous! Imagine an exhausted ski racer doing a downhill race!!

It's just all that what I wanted to point out.

oh yes, by the way, I understand the word "Gicht" and know what you mean!

[eische]

Ok gck, if you make such a definite distinction between »distcomfort« and »pain«, then whenever the word »pain« appears, you will naturally see the red-alarm-sign :).
But I don't believe that people will make such a difference in general.......
...especially when you count them to be not-experienced in their own body-language (like you seem to do, and I don't believe that really - just don't underestimate the abilities of others;) body-language is not connected to sports, but is part of normal life, because you live within your body), they will just have one word for all.

and just some curiosity: people never involved in sports?????? - isn't it a class at school:confused:. I mean, we were obliged to have sports at least four hours a week?????? (of course that wouldn't help, if you had a bad teacher bringing up all those strange sayings you mentioned;))

[treyphish]

i think its just because your a new player my fingers hurt too when i first started. sounds normal to me.

[gck]

@eische:
oh well, there's sports, and there's SPORTS. I mean, almost everyone does some sort of training, maybe jogging, going to gym or whatever...
The problem is that once you start off with something on your own you are very prone to making mistakes: for example, many "spare-time" joggers do not breath correctly etc... So, if nobody tells you, you might consider your little performance too be normal and that it will get better soon. However, instead you are risking something!
It's a common saying where I live that "the only dumb mistake is one you make twice!": if nobody told you about it, you can't know it! I don't think I underestimate others, no, au contraire, I believe people can be draw very clever conclusions on their own, that can be very logical, but still wrong! To me, "pain makes me stronger" sounds logical, doesn't it? Once you get used to something painful, the pain will go away? Sounds perfectly logical, however, is wrong!
It's really amazing how a sports coach, for example, can help you out then: I have played basketball on the street a lot before I wanted to be in a team. Therefore, I had my own technique, partly inspired by what I saw professionals do on TV, partly by what "felt correct" to me. However, the first thing my trainer did when seeing me throw was to correct my motion. Suddenly, my hit quote increased by 20% percent!!

I am sure people generally are clever enough to figure out things on their own, but it's also a fact that others have lots more experience with things, they may even have made a degree in that on a University etc... so it would be arrogant to claim to know better than those professionals. They are there to help you with the things that are not so obvious to answer.

And I just want to distribute the knowledge I was given. I'm neither a doctor, nor a sportscoach, nor a guitar teacher, my only advice is: discomfort can eventually lead to pain, and pain is a sure sign you are making something wrong. If you can't figure out the problem on your own, see a professional that might help. If playing guitar induces pain, you might want to see a doctor to check if everything is ok with your fingers and you are not getting an inflammation, and you might want to get a guitar teacher to correct your technique.

One more thing: the sports lessons we have at school are rather useless. We jump around, play games and that sort of stuff. We don't learn anything about the human body. It's more of a relaxation lesson than something to take seriously.

[eische]

:) yessss, yes, I got your point, but see, I was about to post something like »why does it hurt so much to play guitar« earlier on this forum (I came over it somehow), and it would have been on the fingers that grip the string. In the beginning, I mean before you get your blisters and hardened tips, it is aking like hell - no damage there except peeling skin and numb fingertips for some weeks. :)

If then I would have get a serious-go-see-the-doctor-message I would have been very confused and nervous.....and that is why I thought you to be a bit over-alarming. But having your different word-using about pain and discomfort in mind, yes, ok, your right;) .

on the sports: well, it's very different then with what we had in sports at school. We had to learn some theorie too. You know, why to jump high if you do a long-jump and why to keep your head down the first meters, slowly straightening up in a 100-meter-sprint and why to hold your back stright when doing push-ups and that things.
I remember our teacher once told us to just stand for 5 minutes, having in mind that all the muscles in the legs, the butt, belly and shoulders should be in tension - very hard job and definitely training your body-feeling. Also we where not playing games all the time, just as a relaxation in the last part of the sports-class to let go all the tension in mind and body before........so......I have a bit of a different aspect there;)
I am as well very alarmed when I hear about people »just doing a bit of jogging before breakfast«. They normally do more damage to their bodies than they imagine even in their wildest dreams and still think they improve their fitness....