Take Care of Your Hands

Aside from learning to play the guitar, you will need to know how to take care of your hands. Your hands, from now on, are going to be guitarist hands.  Your fingers will hurt. Their tips will develop calluses.  Your wrist will also play an important part in executing those chords and riffs.  So how do you take care of your guitarist hands?  Here are three tips to keep in mind:


1) To prevent your fret hand from injury, keep your calluses in check. Take a buffer board to your fingertips once or twice a week. Buffing and filing your calluses IS important. Over time the outermost layer of skin will begin to peel. It's imperative at that time to buff the callous smooth, or you risk getting a string caught in an open groove of your callous when changing chords.

2) Playing the guitar can make your fingers sore. You can put some ice in a bowl of water and soak your fingertips for a minute or run just run cold water over your fingertips. This will prevent blisters and will speed up building your calluses. Be sure to allow some time after soaking your hands before playing again.

3) Be very aware of the angle of your left wrist. Since you're teaching yourself, you won't have a teacher telling you you're holding your wrist wrong, but if you have it bent too much, you can do serious damage to yourself. Keep it straight! If you're not sure about it, show your technique to someone experienced, and ask about your wrist position.

You are going to make beautiful music with your hands when you play the guitar, so you should take care of them and keep them free from injury.

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