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OK, I am back home now and playing my guitar. All should be happy and well, but I have a bit of a problem… some tendonitis is flaring up in my right wrist. And it seems to be aggravated by playing my guitar. Anyone out there having any wrist tendonitis due to playing guitar?

Now one thing I need to be clear on - the guitar playing is not the root cause of the tendonitis. That first showed up about three years ago on a river trip. You see, one of my big passions is whitewater kayaking. I was on a five day trip up in Dinosaur National Monument (on the Green River - doing the Lodore section for any river rats out there) and around the end of day two my wrist started hurting.

Being a red-blooded American male I did what came naturally - I ignored the pain. But it kept getting worse, and by the end of the third day it was excruciating. I had no experience with tendonitis before that, and didn’t know what was wrong… but my buddy Paul was on the trip, and he is a physical therapist. He was able to quickly diagnose the problem and prescribe the solution - rest.

This is getting long, and I want to get back to my guitar. Long story short, after the trip I rested up my wrist and it got better. No problems since. But about a month ago I was playing a lot of tennis, doing a lot of paddling, and playing a lot of guitar. And that tendonitis started to come back… just a little bit, but I knew where it would go if I ignored it.

So I stopped paddling and playing tennis for a few weeks, and it got better. At that point I hadn’t linked playing guitar to the tendonitis… so I didn’t think about it. After I got back from vacation, my wrist was feeling mostly fine. I played tennis once, didn’t do any paddling… but I have been playing guitar every day - and the tendonitis is starting to come back.

Lately I have been trying to rest my wrist… and wearing a brace when convenient. The tendonitis is mostly under control, but I notice that after I pracitice my guitar the tendonitis is always a little worse.