limits

There are hard limits on how much you can do.  Musically you can only play until your fingers start to wobble and the notes grind or mesh together.  You can only practice until your fingers bleed or giant calluses form that disfigure you or, worse of all, you get a wrist cramp.  I'll be talking about the worst of all possible situations, the wrist cramp.  Yeah really.  This is a warning.  One time, I laughed and kept playing.  Boom, couldn't play for a week.  Scary stuff.

So, you're probably thinking, fine, so what?  Sometimes you just go down and don't get back up?  That does not help me.  Well, glad you asked.  According to my research, sleep and lack of practice are the only things that can help you.  If at all possible, you should invest in protective material for your arm.  I didn't, but I figure it would probably work.  So, how do I know when I'm getting close?  Should be kinda obvious.  Short sessions help if you're not so aware.

The hardest part is going to be actually stopping.  I noticed that I started to get withdrawls by about day 2.  By day 4 or 5, I was willing to risk it.  But, I was able to decide that if I waited I'd have a better chance of it not happening again.  After that, you'll need to scale back your practice schedule because you will be weak.  This can not be helped, but with proper disipline you can get back to where you used to be and beyond hopefully since you were probably practicing too much in the first place with that intention.