Proper wrist / hand posture for power chords

I’ve been practicing a fair bit of power chords in the recent week, and have been plagued by wrist pain. I’m not sure if it’s because my wrist posture is off. Can someone tell me if this is bad:

Looking at my own photos, it doesn’t seem too different from Justin:

There have been discussions in the past about wrist pain. In that video, the guitar teacher (who isn’t Justin) says that the wrist should not be bent at all, i.e. the palm of the hand should be parallel to the floor. That is certainly comfortable, but I can’t figure out how to play power chords with the wrist completely straight.

Any ideas?

(Just to put it out there—I’m younger than Justin, so it’s definitely not the onset of arthritis.)

1 Like

Justin has been playing for decades.

Raise the guitar head so the neck is more at a 45 degree angle when you are playing power chords towards the nut.

It should reduce your wrist angle a lot

Also elbow out more! not close to the body

2 Likes

What Rob says!

Your wrist looks like it has a LOT of bend.
When I play power chords, my wrist is bent considerably less than what you see in Justin’s photo there. I keep my elbow low & tucked close to my body with about a 30 degree up-angle to the neck of the guitar & don’t have any wrist pain. That said, we’re all built differently so this may not work for you… I would try to limit the wrist angle though!

Tod

PS Took me a few minutes but I remembered & found this advice Fretting Hand Wrist Position for Better Finger Reach & No Wrist Pain in another thread (same video in that post) that may be useful!

3 Likes

Good memory as always Tod :smiley:

Hey @barny, the video in that post Tod linked, really helped me finding easier and pain free adjustments to my wrist (and shoulders too). It’s been almost a year now, I still train Jiu-jitsu 4 times a week, guitar 6 days a week, and my wrist has barely bothered me as much as it used to since I made some of those adjustments.

Just remember to listen to your own body. Everybody’s physical makeup is different, so what might be comfortable for one person (especially if they’ve been doing it from an early age) might not be comfortable for someone else (especially when learning at an older age, our bodies are less forgiving). However, there are some general principles that once you’re aware of them and integrate them into your playing, it becomes much more comfortable and safer to practice in the long term.

1 Like

Stand up and play
I had the same problem you have right now. Someone told me to stand up use A guitar strap to play. You need to point your headstock up higher 30 to 45° would do great. Also, you need to keep your wrist straighter and bend more at the finger joints by your palm of your hand. Do those two things and practice for a few days. You will be great!
For me it took about 2 days of playing that way and then I could sit down and play with no pain after that because I knew how to hold The guitar.
Hope this helps. Good luck on your guitar journey!

3 Likes

Thanks for the responses everyone! I’ll definitely try out your suggestions.

You mean my elbow should be higher? Wouldn’t that make things worse?

That definitely would help, but how high do you have to keep the neck of the guitar to get that angle? One problem I have is that I can’t seem to find a way to keep the neck much further up without help from the fretting hand; the guitar neck just slides down (along with the strap). Maybe I have to change the way the guitar rests on my leg.

Yeah, it actually did already help, especially with the F chord. (I linked to that same video in my original post.) In this case, I just couldn’t figure out how to straighten my wrist with power chords. For the F chord, I could tilt my fingers sideways, and it just works. But I can’t seem to do the same for power chords. I’ll experiment with it a bit more.

1 Like

That is something that didn’t even occur to me. I can see how that might help. Thanks for the tip; I’ll definitely try it out!

Just try it out from your body more, with the head further up/angled

its about finding what works for you