Why Does Guitar Playing Make Your Left Hand Hurt?

You love playing guitar.

But you wish your left hand didn’t hurt during each practice session.

You’ve tried many different stretches and exercises.

But the discomfort remains.

There’s a solution many students and teachers overlook.

For years, I ignored it.

What is this solution?

Try a shorter guitar!

You may be tempted to dismiss this, but I’ve become convinced that finding the best guitar size for your hands makes a huge difference in minimizing left-hand pain and making guitar playing as enjoyable as possible.

Let’s look at a few aspects of guitar size:

1. Guitar Body

When the guitar body is smaller, it's easier to reach around the guitar with your right arm. This is helpful, but for left-hand comfort, there's a more important measurement. That is…

2. Scale Length

This is the length of the vibrating string, which is the distance from nut to saddle. For a classical guitar, the standard scale length is 650mm (25.59 inches).

3. Small Guitars Are for Kids?

When we think of a smaller guitar, we may think of a 1/2 size guitar, which is usually 535mm scale length (not really half of standard scale length). Or a 3/4 size guitar, which is usually 580mm scale length.

These guitars can be helpful for young students. But there are more nuances than this.

4. Slightly Smaller Guitars

If you look carefully, you can find guitars that are 640mm scale length, 630mm scale length, and 620mm scale length. It is worth trying these to find out if they are more comfortable for your left hand than a standard scale-length guitar.

5. What is the Right Size?

If you can put your left-hand fingers on the first, second, third, and fourth frets at the same time without feeling an uncomfortable stretch, the guitar is probably a good size for you.

6. How Small is Too Small?

A guitar fretboard can be so small that it’s hard to fit your fingers on it.

Sometimes you can remedy this by curving your fingers more so they are on their tips,

Or you could look for a wider neck combined with a short scale length. The standard nut width is 52mm, and you can experiment with variations on this number as well.

But if fitting the fingers in the frets continues to feel cramped, the guitar may be too small.

In this case, you can try a slightly bigger guitar. If this happens on a 620mm scale length guitar, try 630mm instead of jumping directly to 650mm.

Finding the best guitar size for your hands may take time.

But it can greatly increase your enjoyment in playing!

Besides making sure your guitar fits your hand size, one of the best things you can do to improve your guitar playing is start each practice session with a simple Warmup Routine.

If you want a free PDF of my Warmup, click here.

Keep making music!