Hi all, this may sound like a silly question. I am a 62 year old beginner and I have managed to borrow a guitar from my next door neighbour, it is a 3/4 size electric they bought for thier daughter. I have been learning chords etc for a week but am having pain issues in both my wrist and shoulder on my fretting hand. I try to place my thumb in the middle of the neck and arch my fingers so as not to mute other strings when strumming. This appears to cause me to bend my wrist and push my elbow out and in turn this pulls on my shoulder, if I play the guitar as you would a classical guitar, on my left leg and angle the headsock upwards (in my case almost vertical) it eases my shoulder pain, but not the wrist angle. Is this normal for a beginner?. Sorry if this is a bit of a dumb question.
Hi Andrew,
I have come to think that the thumb on the back takes some adjustment. We are told the ideal place, but that doesn’t take into account all anatomical situations. I just could not put my thumb where we are told to do so without a deep bend at the wrist - too deep.
There are a couple things I found that help:
- move the thumb across the neck as needed to support the fretting, but also notice that is will rotate around the neck with the placement of the fingers. It will be near the top when fingers are mostly on the first strings (like an open D), but will need to rotate around toward the middle or bottom for something like open E.
- It took me a while to be physically able to curl my fingers. This was in parts stretching, strength, and familiarity. Your wrist should have a mild bend to it, not anything extreme. An extreme bend will eventually produce injury, so it is good that you are trying to fix that early. Look at which knuckle you are getting the fingers to bend when fretting. I’ll bet you could use more bend at the last knuckle to help straighten your wrist. Use some control and some stretching exercises to improve this (search the forums a bit).
- See if you are straight across with your fingers, or slightly slanted, respective of the string length. Coming on straight across will help with only pressing the strings you want, but at the expense of a bent wrist. See if rotating your forearm/hand so fingers come across strings at a little angle will help.
The shoulder sounds like you are trying to compensate for a low mobility in the fingers. I cannot really tell without looking at your position, but this is my guess. Playing will involve moving the elbow in and out from your body, but you should not need to reach forward or backward, or raise/drop your shoulder. Moving the elbow out and in is to help with forearm rotation that will be a little different across different chords, and eventually locations on the neck.
The neck of the guitar needs to be at a steeper angle so you don’t have to bend your wrist so much. Try and keep it as straight as possible.
It is great you found the classical position even using an electric guitar. This position is what saves my shoulder as well.
There are lots of variations to what a good “classical posture” is, so experiment with where the guitar needs to be for the best comfort in playing, then find a way to hold it there. I personally recommend against long term use of foot stools. That aggravate the back. Short term they are fine. I prefer lifts.
The wrist issue could be a lot of things. Most likely it is just a beginner thing. At the start, we can’t yet physically and mentally let our fingers do the work and we reach around with our wrist. That can be magnified by the beginner desire to tilt the guitar so we can see the fretboard, placing it at an awkward angle.
The classical position should not require any added wrist torque or bend, in fact, it reduces it for me. Look at where the guitar head (tuners) is. It shouldn’t be more than a guitar body width (4-5”) in front of your head and the fretboard would ideally be perpendicular to the floor, or close to it.
You may need to lift your elbow a bit (I let my guitar be low between my legs to minimize this). Mostly, you probably need to concentrate on playing with your wrist nearly straight most of the time letting your palm be just below the neck and using your fingers to do curl to the string. This wasn’t easy and took a long time for me.
Remember to take breaks and any lasting wrist pain, tingling in you fingers or pain radiating into your hand requires a prolonged break.
Hang in there!
Hey Andy, not a silly question at all, and it’s great you’re asking early in your journey. Can you post a couple photos showing both how you hold the guitar (so a pic showing the entire guitar while fretting a chord) as well as one or two pics showing your fretting hand only? Great advice above, but folks will be better able to give guidance specific to you with some visuals. Don’t worry, the photos don’t have to be art-quality. 
(FWIW, I’m a grade 3 beginner, and still struggle with wrist pain in some situations. So far it’s always been resolved by having someone critique my form!)
I don’t know if it applies to you, but one mistake that a lot of beginners, including me, make is thinking that the guitar should be held parallel to the front of the body. That can cause you fret with the elbow and shoulder pushed back. Look at all the videos of Justin and notice that the elbow is always relaxed by his side and the neck of the guitar is as far away from his body as the length of his forearm. It looks like Justin in facing the camera, but only his head and guitar face the camera. His shoulders, body and legs are at an angle to the camera. It took me a couple of years to learn that and adjust my guitar. I still have the urge to put my guitar straight across my lap.
Except in the classical position. Then it isn’t out as far. But absolutely correct. I made that mistake for quite a while, until I found some pictures of a guitar player from above.
Hi Andy, I too get left shoulder pain while playing due to an old injury. Mine tends to flare up more when I play standing vs. sitting. Check out these two videos on Justin’s site. They may help you sort out how to reposition yourself. The first is a video dedicate just to posture. The second is how to play the F chord. Staring around the eight minute mark on the F chord video he goes into some posture tips that may help. As he points out, we all have our unique anatomy and it can be a bit of trial and error to sort out what works best. Hope these help and good luck.