Barre Chord Fatigue

short breaks..

i used to have that problem, then i got used to it, if i play barre chords for ages it will ache again, but like you said, stamina.

**

but now, i get it with other things, say playing a major/minor scale on the first 2 frets with the thumb right behind the neck so your hand is kind of curled under the guitar, it hurts me a lot, (but i can go longer without it hurting)

dont.. "play for ages", then "dont play for ages", have a go till it gets sore.. then say watch something on your pc, or improvise a bit, then go back, that doing things in little breaks helped me.

It's also possible that you're gripping the neck harder than you need to. Relax a bit. It doesn't really take much pressure to fret a barre chord. As your positioning of your hand and especially of your thumb improves, the weight of your arm should hold the chord for you. Stay relaxed as you play these chords.

To follow up on the previous points -- I guess like everyone else I suffered from that same left hand fatigue as I tried to choke the strings by squeezing with my thumb and barring index finger. Then I was told about the arm-weight method that Musenfreund mentioned.

The way it was described to me was -- hold your index finger barre and, for the case of exageration, pull back with the force of your arm as if you were trying to break the guitar in half over your chest/stomach. (You'll obviously need to stabilize the bridge-end of the guitar with your right arm.)

Again, this represents a gross exagerration of the force needed. But you'll realize by using arm strength, you don't need that much finger force. You will discover that you could probably even do a barre chord without your thumb at all in this exagerrated method. Obviously, not practical for actually playing. But, you'll learn to adjust how much arm weight to use.

The other thing that helped me successfully barre chords was getting a good quality guitar that is nicely set up. My first cheapo was a real finger-buster.

Thanks, folks. I have within the past few weeks discovered that the arm muscles rather than the finger and thiumb should be used to make the barre. I was not doing that in the beginning- I was trying to squeeze too hard. I am trying to transition, that is, unlearn the habit I originally developed. I am trying more now to "pull" on the neck with my arm when making a barre. I suppose it will take a little time to unlearn my old habit and learning the new habit.

I will try relaxing more and let you all know how it goes.

I may be a bit off here but am pulling from my own experience. At 4 months I did not really care to play anything but the “mini-barred F.” I was content to get the open chords down and slowly try barred chords here and there in my practice.

After playing a couple of years I use barres lots and it's still fatiguing after awhile. You don't get muscles strong and coordinated right away. I'd suggest trying barres for maybe 20 seconds at a time then switch to an open chord.

Another thing I developed (for good or bad) is to hold the barre chords and let the finger pressure go but still just touching the strings. I'll strum and get a percussive sound then grip the barre chord again. Doing that lets you hand rest half the time and gets some interesting sounds.