carlos soto -> RE: tendonitis - for georg! (Nov. 26 2007 6:31:43)
|
I've had tendonitis 2 times. The first time in my hands and recently in my left leg. Some say tendonitis is from a bad posture but I'm really sure that may be a factor but not the main one. I think tendonitis it's mainly due to an over-use/over-training and not resting and sleeping well, I would also add to this factors how well you are eating, the connective tissue is made mostly of collagen, so if you eat fast food all the time you will stay with tendonitis for a while because you won't get the proper amino acids to synthesize the collagen protein. Just like when you go to a gym or exercise your body you have to prevent injuries, specially if you are obsessive about stuff or an elite athlete. When I had my hands(yes, both) with tendonitis I thought I was ****ed for life, I bought pills and all kinds of stuff to get well and keep playing, but the thing that really worked for me was understanding how the body works and make the work load from that. The thing is simple, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger -yes, that's true- since the time of my injuries I'm a lot more stronger with my hands and doing a much less effort to play, but if you get to a point that you are so destroyed and you keep doing it in a way that you think that if you suffer it could be a benefit to you, you are wrong my friend, and from that you may never recover from, so my advice is the next one: First, get well. You can't go to therapy to walk again if your bone is still fractured, the point is, let it heal, and just after you know you are better start playing again, gently; as if you know you are recovering from something. Second, after a week or two without even touching a guitar, picking up weight, or even using your hands to open a soda(tendonitis was that ****ty to me), you can start the rehab process. To me this consisted in putting my hands in hot water for about 10 minutes- this will ease the pain a lot- and then playing in short sessions apart from each other. I played one or two times a day for 15 minutes each and no less than 4 hours of rest between them, leaving also a resting time the very next next day without touching the guitar. During the rehab process you CANNOT feel pain, I found this frustrating at the beginning but then I realized that if I was able to stop and think for about 10 seconds what was wrong, where was the pain coming from and changing the way I was playing to find a better posture that would still give me the absolute freedom I wanted but with no pain at all, then that was the perfect posture to me, and I could use it later when I was healed to prevent myself coming back to that injured state. So not all is bad, you can actually benefit from having this injure, you will know yourself a lot better after this. Third, adjust yourself. If you think you are only making it worse with the amount of rehab cut it, if you think you can increase do it, carefully. Fourth, don't get down, attitude is a must and if you get down you won't get better. Fifth, after a long period of just gently playing you can take longer rests to build up and then play hardcore stuff, but stop when you feel the pain or you know that's about to come. That's pretty much the steps I took to heal, I'm fine with my hands now, they just make a nasty cracking noise but the pain is gone. I now work in a very different way I used to, I don't use the hot water anymore but I split my work load leaving a whole day to rest, I have found this makes me improve my skills a lot faster and I feel strong and relaxed while I'm playing, it also depends if I worked picado too much then I might just do some thumb work the next day, but I feel I'm conscious about my health and this also improves directly the way I practice and hence my skills. Well, I hope you get better, tendonitis is a bitch but you have to keep the possitive attitude, it's a sign that you are pushing your body beyond it's limits and that's good but just learn what that limit is and try to stay within it. Carlos
|
|
|
|