How to develop a more relaxed fretting hand?

[Jamolay]

We had a little discussion about a Udemy course on this topic in this thread:

Finger Tension

I have been noticing tension. It is something to think about, especially emphasized with the classical guitar training. But, I noticed that I have a lot of left hand muscular tension. Especially in the spider and scale exercises (which I don’t do nearly often enough, clearly) I get muscular fatigue in my forearm and hand. Not pain or injury, just strain and soreness, like I am working out too hard or too long. So, in my incessant perusal of all things Guitar, I was looking at the YT channel of…

I am not sure the course content is worth it’s cost at $39 USD, but look at the sample lesson. It gives you the gist of a reasonable focusing exercise for tension. The rest of the course is applying this to both the fretting hand and picking hand.

I also agree with spending some time just fretting a cord. Find the least pressure, find the tension, try removing your thumb and still have the cord ring, try relaxing ever tense muscle while holding it and so on. A few minutes of focused meditation on tension every practice.

The guy in the Udemy course recommends doing nothing but his exercises for many hours daily for a couple of weeks I think. The idea being that by only focusing on the techniques to release tension, you can’t fall back out during routine practice. Although that is probably a good idea, that is also not achievable for me, but I did learn some from his course.