Hand Care

Thanks very much for that awesome write-up, @T_dub!

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Great writeup. Thanks for this.

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Thank you, it would have been so much easier to link to the video he does, but it’s on a subscription site.
Great finger and technique excercises on that site as well, low monthly fee too.

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Killer routine, and thanks for the in depth explanation and photos.

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My pleasure, since it’s impossible to link to the video without logging into the member area, photoswere necessary to make sure the words had meaning :thinking:

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My experience has been similar to yours. After a period of ‘good’ soreness, a ‘bad’ soreness has begun to creep in, with it not mitigating at all. In some days it would even be worse. One thing I learned from my ultramarathon days (the hard way) is to pay attention to those niggles and not delude myself into hoping that it will just go away.
In my case I am preemptively taking care of it by accepting that the ‘one finger per fret’ concept is not gospel, and to micro-shift as much as possible. Just because I can fret scales in a one-finger-per-fret fashion doesn’t mean that I should. If the reach feels even remotely challenging, I’m micro-shifting. I regret not starting with this approach from day zero because now I have to retrain the muscle memory, thankfully it was caught early in the process. Good luck.

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There was this guy from Bradford, Yorkshire, who at age 70 was not only still considered lightning-fast when legato soloing, but also routinely played unplayable chords, the Magical Holdsworth Clusters, involving stretches spanning more frets than considered medically possible on this planet.

His warmup before shows? Sticking his front paws into a bucket with warm water…

Keep in mind that the muscles operating your fingers are in your lower arm!

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Great guide @T_dub! Thanks

Now we need a “Show us your tats” thread…

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Actually someone would just have to start it and I bet it would get filled.

I’m not a tat guy but sometimes enjoy art in general and especially if it’s about the joker and harley quinn :smiley:

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Haha, guess I kind of did. :joy::joy::joy:

Thanks, glad it is helping others.

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No Jokers yet @juli0r, but I have the one HQ as you can see. I am a big fan of clowns
From movies / TV’s, from old Skateboard decks, or comics, wherever. Just not serial killers.
My daughter, as soon as I am able to check her out of her treatment center are getting matching ones.
I am dead serious when I say this- one of the first things she asked me from her hospital bed, after coming back from surgery to from ESP the foot, and coming out of an induced coma, and getting the tubes out of her throat, and she was able to talk, was “dad, can we get matching Tattoos”

I said, “of course, we already have it picked out, remember”. She said she did, and asked to see it again, so I showed it to her on my phone. Its this HQ face.

Hahaha, she just called me as I was typing this to tell me that she is moving over to the other side tomorrow, and asked if I could call Jeff and set up a time with him on Saturday.
Won’t be doing the matching ones on Sat, but they are going to happen soon. It helps to have a best friend of 30 plus years that is a tattoo artist for 30 plus years.

Jokers, thinking of doing something with this outline, and filling it in, or all around it, leaving inside the outline empty.

And I have other ideas too.

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Oh clowns in general are not my thing at all but they don’t have to be. While I like you I don’t think we’ve reached a matching tattoo level of intimacy :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I imagine that moment felt nice when she said that.

So you’re telling me this is not supposed to be the joker? While Harley is on the other side of the arm!? That confuses me theme-wise :wink:

And it always helps to have a friend in a certain field if one is interested in that as a customer :slight_smile:

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No, that is not necessarily supposed to be the joker. I have 5 clowns on that arm in total, well, a few others, and “Pennywise”. Band logo, with other clowns inside of it. That one ties into them, they are SkateDeck like clowns, more like this.

And I am gonna get this one somewhere.

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Most of the time they are not exact copies, we take the idea, and I let him create and go with it, so they are unique to me, and his art.

There are exceptions, like that HQ face that we are gonna get, it will be pretty close to the original, colors may change.

Then there are things like the usual suspect clown image. It will be mostly a copy, but some things I’ll change a little.

The skate deck clowns are only ideas, they were changed drasticly, but you could sort of see that the skateboard was the basis for the creation, like this guy. You can pick the skate deck he came from I am sure, but they are not the same.
It’s really just the hair.

But now we are way off topic so I created a thread for tattoos

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@T_dub Haven’t posted in a while, but not because I haven’t been practicing. Couple things I’ve learned:

  • At age 63 and as a total beginner to bass playing, my arms, fingers, wrists are about as supple and flexible as a chunk of concrete. Reaching out to 1st position and then curling my hand around the neck to finger the E string is not easy and it causes some discomfort. A couple weeks ago I could work these exercises (currently working out of a book with a metronome) no more than 10 minutes without taking a momentary break. I can go longer now, probably up to 20 minutes before the discomfort kicks in, so I know what I’m doing is training my concrete appendages into being something like maybe oak.

  • Warming up is essential and I appreciate these exercises to limber up. It definitely helps. One thing a YT sports physician said about the type of isometric techniques (gentle, using only the weight of the opposite arm) is to anchor the left arm for a right-handed player onto a desk surface. That controls the amount of gentle tension put onto the wrist when the hand/wrist is bent in any given direction.

  • This set of exercises is much more complete and I suspect using it will help me better than what I’ve already seen on YT. Thank you for posting it along with the photos!

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Thank you for posting that. I am glad it is helping you, and hope it is helping others. Hope you are soon up to 30 min and feeling less like an old oak, and more like a Spring chicken. :joy:

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Don’t worry @Eupher. I’m 6-7 years younger than you and I’ve certainly felt aches and pains over the past few weeks. It has gotten better but it does jog my memory now and again

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I have a slightly different kind of hand care question:

I’m one week into playing bass (just starting module 6), and the skin on my fretting fingertips is starting to hurt a bit. Kind of feels like a light burn. Is this normal, or am I gripping too hard? Even with the amount of pressure I’m applying I’m still getting buzz sometimes (especially on the pinky), so I’m not sure how I could use any less.

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@akos it’s perfectly normal. In time your fingertips will be like soft leather pads.

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Great, thanks! Looking forward to the ninja fingertips.

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