Fretting hand thumb pain

[karmapavementplan]

Hi, I've picked up a bad habbit of applying far too much pressure on the thumb of my fretting hand, which can make playing anything complicated quite painful - any excercises or tips that can help me with this?

Cheers in advance

[Jody LeCompte]

There's not really any magic sauce for this one.

Just loosen up your grip, man.

[EADGC]

try playing without letting your thumb touch the neck at all

you will see that you don't need to squeeze at all.

squeezing isn't good, it just slows you down and can cause injuries.

[karmapavementplan]

Ok, thanks. I tried not putting my thumb on the fretboard at all in the past, but end up screwing up the piece I'm doing. I'm guessing the obvious reply is practice though so I will stop typing and jsut say thanks.

[MusicisLife84]

You know what's funny? I think this is a part of the reason why a lot of the textbooks and training videos on bass technique keep telling us not to use our thumb in fretting. Primary reason is to give the hand more room to explore the frets since the frets are a little wider on a bass than a guitar. I almost never my thumb but I notice some of the best bassists do. Good thing is that my thumb never hurts ever. But I think I should start getting into the habit of using it a little cuz despite what the books say, the best still do use it, ya know? But yeah I'd go with what the majority of the people here are saying.

[karmapavementplan]

Been thinking about possibly using some form of support like a bandage or something on my thumb for the long band practices as I've always has a bit of a bum thumb which kinda half dislocates if I give a thumbs up (inconvenient, huh) - Reckon that might work whilst I work on not pressing so hard/using my thumb at all?

[Jody LeCompte]

I never practice without wearing a wrist stabilizer on both hands, improved my technique a **** load.

[karmapavementplan]

I never practice without wearing a wrist stabilizer on both hands, improved my technique a **** load.

Good idea that man