The older I get, the more I learn about important preventive things you can and should do to take care of your body. When playing an instrument this is especially important because playing is a very repetitive activity and can cause injuries if you are not careful.
One area of big concern for guitar players is the shoulders. Whether you’re playing a Stratocaster, a Les Paul or I think even more so with an acoustic guitar, such as my Martin, it is a problem. This is equally true to computer users who spend hours hunched over a keyboard like my Dell laptop, or maybe your MacBook Pro. To counteract hunched, pulled forward shoulders, you need to stretch your pectoralis (chest) muscles. This is an exercise recommended by my physical therapist:
Go to a corner, put your hands out on each corner about eye level and lean in. Hold this stretch for 4-5 seconds and relax. Repeat this several times, stretching those muscles in the chest. This will help lengthen and relax the pec muscles so they don’t pull your shoulders forward as much.
Be sure to do this any time you have been playing your guitar for awhile…or if you have been working on the computer.
The Important Stretches for Guitar Players by Chris Hartzog, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States License.
