I have a mystery on my hands... literally.

I've been playing for awhile. Good calluses, no pain when I play even for extended periods of time.

But now that I'm starting to seriously/formally learn fingerpicking in Anders' acoustic 1 course, I suddenly find myself having "beginner" finger pain in my fretting fingertips again, as if I'm all the way back at the very beginning.

This mystifies me, because the fretting hand isn't doing anything differently from what it's always done.

My first thought was, ah ha, this just shows that I haven't really been getting a clean sound when strumming and I just didn't notice it because it was strumming rather than picking individual strings. But I double checked that, and that is not the case. Clean sound on all strings when I strum and no fingertip pain.

My next thought is that perhaps I'm tensing up more with my left hand because I'm learning a new thing with my right hand. I suppose that's possible, but it doesn't feel like that's what's happening.

Anyone else have this happen or have any thoughts?