[S-O]

I know what you mean with the feeling in the knife edge of the left hand, the mucle along the side. Mine has never caused that much pain, the feeling was like I had been working out and the muscle was sore and needed rest.

You may be pushing to hard, and rather than increasing your endurance, you are hindering any advancements you may have achieved.

Shake you hand out and let the lactic acid out and the blood in. let your hand kind of dangle a bit to get some blood in there with the help of gravity.

>.> Strap up a tad higher. I don't mean to chest rock (although chestrocking is the superior form of rocking whilst wielding an axe) but don't Page that shit.

[oompa]

i also get pain on the knife side of my left hand. it hurts the most up close to the wrist for me, where the.. muscle or whatever it is, is pretty much twice the size of my righthand knifeside when it is in hurt-mode.

im pretty sure it has nothing to do with how low you strap tho, cus im mainly sitting squeezed up in the corner of a sofa with like.. my chin resting on the top of the guitar so it shouldnt be that.

im not sure that it is the same thing tho because i cant shake the feeling that it is purely related to stretching and overworking the pinky. i dont think it ever hurt when i just played like.. chromatics runs, so maybe its not the same thing. just for safety, try running stuff without the pinky, and then do some major stretch skips and see if it is. i think mine is just related to a small inflammation in the tendon on that muscle or something (but im no doctor ) it also escalates slowly for me whenever it occurs, say over 20minutes, but when it peaks i have to quit playing stuff that is heavy on the pinky. then if a rest for a while and dont do anything pinkyheavy i can play just fine for hours.

[S-O]

Mine hurts when I do pinky crazyness aswell. Like 3nps pentatonic Rusty COoley wannabe playing, and 4 nps RC wanna be playing. Then the single string triad wanna be RC playing. If my pinky just up and falls off, I will blame Mr. Cooley for being my sinpiration.

[All_¥our_Bass]

Originally Posted by Death Waltz

"If right arm falls off, reattach and play much slower."

[Naren]

Originally Posted by S-O

>.> Strap up a tad higher. I don't mean to chest rock (although chestrocking is the superior form of rocking whilst wielding an axe) but don't Page that shit.

This is hilarious.

I assure you that the height of the strap is meaningless. Whether my strap is as high as it'll go, as low as it'll go, or I take the strap off and throw it in the garbage can, nothing will change.

Originally Posted by oompa

im not sure that it is the same thing tho because i cant shake the feeling that it is purely related to stretching and overworking the pinky. i dont think it ever hurt when i just played like.. chromatics runs, so maybe its not the same thing. just for safety, try running stuff without the pinky, and then do some major stretch skips and see if it is. i think mine is just related to a small inflammation in the tendon on that muscle or something (but im no doctor ) it also escalates slowly for me whenever it occurs, say over 20minutes, but when it peaks i have to quit playing stuff that is heavy on the pinky. then if a rest for a while and dont do anything pinkyheavy i can play just fine for hours.

You hit the nail on the head.

I actually noticed this yesterday when I was practicing. I had been playing some exercises for about 15-20 minutes that only lightly used the pinky and then I did an exercise that really really heavily used the pinky and that sharp ache/pain started growing in the knife edge of my left hand. I realized then that it all had to do with my pinky and with nothing else. Playing fast stuff that heavily used the pinky is the cause of my problems.

The name of the this thread really is a pretty big exaggeration, since it's really more of an ache than an all-out pain.

In my case, if I let it rest, I can play fine after 20-30 minutes. It's very unusual...

But now that I know the cause...

[PostOrganic]

Finally a thread about this! About a year ago I was searching trying to find out what was wrong with my pinky because I had this exact same pain... and it only ever occurred when I was playing fast stuff that involved stretching the pinky. If I wasn't stretching it, it didn't 'hurt' at all. And even when my pinky did hurt, I could just keep playing because it wasn't even a "pain" like you said... just a ache. It didn't really have an effect on my playing either.. sure it kind of hurt but it went away shortly after I was done playing. The only reason I ever stopped was because I was concerned I might be damaging something.

Anyways, since I was slightly concerned about it I took a break from guitar at that point (didn't completely stop, just not any real intense practicing) and now I'm back to practicing way more and don't get that pain anymore playing the same stuff. So I am kind of unsure about what fixed it... but I have been doing more finger exercises at a slower speed trying to get my left hand totally going... so I'm thinking I was just pushing my pinky way harder then it could handle at that point considering I totally skipped the playing stuff slow part and hadn't built up enough strength in my pinky.

That's my take on it. Good luck with it though because I know it's a total pain in the ass.

[oompa]

might have had a slight inflammation (or whatever the word is) kinda like me. except i never rest long enough for it to go away, it only gets alittle better so i can play for a while again