Hey guys, I've been playling guitar for about a year and a half, but just starting around the month of May, an area of my shoulder starts to become discomfortable/painful after playing for even a short period of time. This in on my right (picking) arm. Below I have provided a detailed illistration depicting the affected area. I found that doing some John Pertrucci Rock Dislipline style stretches helped to alleviate the pain, though I have to constantly do them throughout a practice session. It's quite annoying, to say the least. I can't remember doing anything to my shoulder that could have damaged it at all either. Does anyone else have this problem? Does anyone know what I could do in the form of a permanent/semi permanent solution?

The pain feels like it is coming from a muscle or tenden on the back part of my shoulder between the arm joint and the shoulder blade.

When playing, do you flare the elbow of your picking arm too far forward or outward instead of keeping it close right next to your hip?

It also might not be from playing, originally. Do you sleep on your right side much?

You should probably post a photo of yourself playing guitar so that we can see if there's something painfully, obviously wrong with your technique.

How much have you practiced lately?

Sounds like a injured rotator cuff. It happened to me once - fucking painful. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot to be done about this kind of injury other than to be very cautious about irritating it until it manages to heal itself. Occasionally, people will undergo surgery to fix the problem, but that's really expensive.

As far as a guitar strap, try using a really wide one. These tend to distribute the weight of a guitar more evenly and that makes it feel lighter.

When you play guitar sitting down, which leg do you put it on? And what kind of stuff do you play?

Do you practice guitar while sitting in a chair with arms?

Do you bash the bishop with anger?

Get a wider, non-nylon strap (something that'll grip the shirt you're wearing). Worse comes to worst, you may want to look into changing the position of your bottom strap lock.

your drawing is cute.


anyway, i get the same type of pain. it comes from your muscles being overtensed in your picking arm, you just have to relax your picking style a little bit.

ppfffhhahahahahaha

I know what you're talking about and I have had that problem when playing light guitars, especially neck heavy ones. What happens is you struggle with your whole right arm to keep the body down. Even if the neck doesn't really dive, you still have to keep the guitar from flopping around when playing with a lot of energy.

The solution is to get a heavier guitar.

Another possible solution is to move one of the strap buttons, especially if you have one of those "strange" shaped guitars, those often have strap buttons placed not in optimal positions. Although this will not totally solve the problem if the guitar is very light.

If you have this problem from playing sitting down though, it's more likely another problem, that you are tensing your muscles on your right hand too much.

I don't think it's from your playing. However, that is an awesome picture.

If I were you I'd be more worried about the fact that your right arm is a baseball bat.

Sorry it took me so long to reply. Again, I will say the pain only comes from playing guitar, and it comes at least in part from me holding my right arm to hover over the guitar. Probably tensing too. Here's a pic of it. The pain is all along the back part of the shoulder and arm area. I would normally attribute this to tensing up or whatever, but as I said before, I used to be able to play guitar for hours on end without any pain or discomfort, and now this pain happens within a couple minutes of starting to practice guitar. The only way to avoid it is to stop and stretch out literally every few minutes.

Here's my guitar also http://www.ibanez.com/ElectricGuitars/model-ARZ400 though I dont think it would have anything to do with it as I've had if for about 9 months now.

Would physio be any benefit to me?

Physical therapy? I'd recommend having a good guitar teacher critique your technique first, if the pain seems to come when you play guitar. Some teachers are better for others with this, so you would need to ask around. A friend picked up one teaching method while studying classical guitar - when the student starts to tense up while playing, the teacher hits him on the back and it's a reminder to loosen up - it also makes you realize when you're breaking proper technique while focusing on other things.

I used to have this problem with bass (I play with pick). I think I solved the problem by lowering the bass a little, switching to a broader strap and changing my picking technique a little.