rodrigonikolof

Junior Member
Hey everyone

I`ve read a bunch of topics regarding hand pain while drumming. But I didn`t find anything useful to me. I`ve been getting this pain/discomfort on top of my right wrist, particularly when positioning my hand on the floor tom and/or hi-hat.

I posted a video of what my hand looks like when playing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TeeyOg5Ue4&feature=youtu.be

Been to a doctor but couldn`t find anything wrong. So it must be technique related.

Any input is welcome.

Thanks :)
 
Bill Bachman is the guy you should be going to.

From what I can see it looks like you are squeezing too much up front at the thumb-index fulcrum. Except for finger control and delicate playing you might want to try a middle finger fulcrum to get the stress off the front of the hand.
 
Maybe 15 degrees laterally either way can cause extra strain. I get pain from typing with my hands at odd angles. I have to type and use the mouse all day at work. I get minor discomfort from that, but not from drumming really.

Try strengthening your wrists by putting a small weight on the end of a rope and tying the other end to the middle of a 2 ft long dowel that's about the same diameter of a weight lifting dumbbell. Then roll the weight up and down, going both ways, palms down.
 
I am not a hand specialist but I've been to a few for my battles with tendonitis.

Anyway, YouTube has some Thomas Pridgen vids in which he describes his hand positions etc...

One of the things he talks about is his matched grip and how he strikes around the kit positioning his hands much like a boxer punches, which is comfortable for him.

I've tried it a bit and yes it is comfortable. However I am not drumming at the intensity of Thomas Pridgen and I use trad grip switching occasionally to matched "American Style" and now I'm working on the concept that Thomas Pridgen employs and I think Kirk Covington might use this boxer punch as well.

I am really sensitive to hand position as I continue to experience tendon pain, trigger finger, and tennis elbow... in a word tendonitis. And when I feel the ropes tighten up in my arms I know it is time to shift postions, grip, etc...

Check out what Thomas Pridgen is talking about.
 
I think I have a pretty good guess.

It is clear from the video that there is a lot of tension in your arms. Imagine snapping your fingers, but pausing right before the middle finger slides off the thumb. You feel the pressure between your fingers? This is happening in your wrist because of the tension in your arm. Your wrist is much stronger that your smallest finger joint and it takes more time for the wrist joints to wear out, but they will wear out. The solution: reform your technique to play freely without tension, and get some massage. The massage won't fix things for for long by itself, but does help the healing process if you fix the cause as well.

Also, it appears that you are holding your elbows still and not allowing the arm to properly contribute to the motion. This is probably a lot of what is causing the tension mentioned above because by fixing part of the arm in place, you overload the rest of the arm. The entire arm should contribute to each and every stroke - even if very little.

Unfortunately, there is a common misconception that you should only use the wrist to play (or only wrist-fingers). The phrase "It's all in the wrist" was made famous by Bonham when someone asked him "why are you so good". It is a self deprecating joke, and not to be taken seriously.

There are a lot of exercises that tell drummers to hold one thing still, to fix part of the arm in place, in order to learn proper technique. These are nearly all dangerous in the long term, causing pain, injury and ultimately decreasing speed power and endurance.
 
Also, if you are in extreme discomfort now, just take a break from the drums and let your hand heal. And when you return, work on an appropriate sticking technique/grip as suggested. Do not play if you are in any pain, because you risk turning it into a chronic problem. Identify the issue, resolve it and play pain-free instead.
 
I watched your video and here's what I noticed:

Your wrist pretty much never makes it down to neutral relative to the forearm when playing wrist strokes. You're hitting the drum with the hand still in its slightly upper range of motion where there's less power it's not going to be fully relaxed. Put your forearms higher relative to the drum such that your hand is farther down (neutral or even down a bit) relative to your forearms upon impact. That'll relieve some stress.

When you go to finger control dribble stuff your wrist only then hits neutral relative to the forearm. Your hand should drop down into a "doggy paw" to facilitate finger dribbling (making space for the back of the stick to move up and down under the hand without hitting the palm). Again, that's really just the same problem mentioned above.

In baseball, right handed batters hit pretty much all of their home runs to left field since there's more bat acceleration at that point. If you equate your wrist's range of motion with a batter's swing you would be trying to hit your home runs to right field and probably trying extra hard to do it as you're at a technical disadvantage.

Also, for the downstrokes you could relieve stress by rolling the thumb more on top of the stick (which closes the gap) such that it can help hold the front of the stick down while the back fingers pull the butt end of the stick up into the palm (brakes). Notice how the thumb moves up to the top side of the stick when you dribble with the fingers--same concept where it relieves the need to the thumb to extra lateral squeezing. I've had many students with tendonitis come to me for lessons after excessively squeezing the stick in order to maintain the gap in their quest for looseness. Quite often your hands can be more relaxed by closing the gap between your thumb & hand even though many preach otherwise. There's a time to gap and time not to (and the "gap" really refers to the thumb's position). Wrist driven downstrokes is definitely a time to close the gap to reduce stress.

Your hand(s) with thank you for those couple modifications. Good luck!
 
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