John E. Walker is an amateur guitarist who lives in Billings, Montana. Here, he talks about how his love of playing classical guitar was derailed by a nerve problem. <\/i><\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been suffering from ulnar nerve issues in my right forearm for many years. In the mid-1990s, I put down the electric guitar after many years of being obsessed with it and decided I was ready to commit myself fully to the classical guitar. I would spend my days working at the computer as a computer tech\/network admin, and four to six hours every evening working on my two hours of standard classical guitar repertoire. I played this repertoire at various weddings and churches for a couple of years and wanted to become the best player I could become.<\/span><\/p>\n However, my hopes and dreams were eventually dashed, as I began to experience numbness from my right elbow, down to my ring and pinky fingers. I tried moving my mouse hand from my right hand to my left\u2014which I still do to this day\u2014but it didn\u2019t alleviate the numbness. I eventually saw a specialist, but the stretches he gave me weren\u2019t enough to combat my growing issue. So, I reluctantly put down the classical guitar and went back to playing electric guitar in country and rock bands. I have always been able to do that because solid-body guitars are thinner, and I usually stand while playing. I believe that my long days of computer work, combined with nights sitting hunched over my classical guitar, with my forearm resting on the lower bout, all combined to create a perfect storm for my ulnar nerve.<\/span><\/p>\n Fast forward 20 years… I can now play acoustic guitar again in moderation (and have been gigging my solo acoustic material on and off for several years). I spend more time working on my \u201cflamenco-jazz\u201d stuff these days than classical pieces. But I love it all and want to do it all again. Only this time I am aware that I have to remember not to over-do things. Maybe one day, after I\u2019ve retired from my computer-related job, I can go back to spending hours every day playing the classical guitar.<\/span><\/p>\n John E. Walker is an amateur guitarist who lives in Billings, Montana. Here, he talks about how his love of playing classical guitar was derailed by a nerve problem. I\u2019ve been suffering from ulnar nerve issues in my right forearm for many years. In the mid-1990s, I put down the electric guitar after many years of being obsessed with it and decided I was ready to commit myself fully to the classical guitar. I would spend my days working at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6612,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[146],"class_list":["post-6606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-injuries-recovery-guitar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/John-E-Walker-Nerve-Injury-Recovery-Guitar-Focal-Dystonia-Classical-Guitar-magazine.png?fit=750%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM “INJURIES. RECOVERY. GUITAR.”<\/a><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"