Avoiding Musical Injury
Music can be delicious but it's also manual labor!
Practicing and performing music is a very physical activity. In spite of all the mental and emotional exertion that goes into it, we must always remember how physical it is. A significant number of musicians suffer from hand or shoulder strains or back problems, especially those play in one position all the time, like pianists and cellists.
A lot of work has been done to investigate injury and injury prevention for musicians; let’s talk about it and finish with a link to learn more from a list compiled by an expert.
I once had a student who was a doctor, a mom who kept her house in pristine order, a gourmet cook, and also decided to learn and excel at the fiddle. In many of her lessons, I had to focus her attention on ergonomics — relaxing unneeded muscles while using the right ones efficiently. But her mind was on overdrive. She seemed to feel, as do many adults, that if she just concentrated hard enough, she could whip her muscles into shape and do everything right.
She arrived at one lesson in a neck brace, after ignoring her pains, clenching and hunching as she practiced. This was when she gave the first indication that she might actually listen to me about breathing and moving ergonomically as she played music!
As I mentioned in the article about reversing presumptions, it’s often difficult to convince people that the mind isn’t really in charge of playing music — it’s most useful taking notice of connections and pathways, and helping out the ears and muscles as they do the real work. This flies in the face of experience for most adults, since we all rely on eyes and brains so much to operate a computer or a car, to learn and control, to manage daily tasks.
In playing an instrument like the fiddle, we use small, precise, repetitive motions involving muscles or angles of movement that our arms or hands may not be used to. The way a little finger or a wrist is used in playing an instrument may be very different than the way that same finger or wrist is used when doing something else, such as operating a computer. I once hurt my wrist from overuse of a computer mouse, but the same wrist had no trouble using my bow. The motions were just different enough, fortunately.
We need to be aware of and look after our muscles and tendons. A high percentage of musicians suffer from aches and pains that are little understood, and are sometimes glibly labelled as "tendonitis" or “bursitis” or another generic ailment. It's certainly dangerous to push through little pains — a physical trainer always told me it’s crucial to move within a pain-free range of motion — but many times it's unnecessary to take weeks off of playing, or to take drugs, in order to manage problems. The right kind of warmups and cooldowns, stretching and strengthening exercises, and massage, can be invaluable not only in preventing injuries but also in treating them. My physical therapist has taught me a great deal about how to do the right exercises.
Many years ago I had a shoulder problem that affected my range of motion for two years. A doctor specializing in sports and music medicine told me I needed 6 weeks rest from playing. But I had to lead a group in a big concert. The doctor had me worried I might damage my shoulder if I kept playing. Luckily I found an excellent Japanese-style accupuncturist who permanently cured the problem in 5 treatments! I did not even have to take time off. This certainly made me think a great deal about how much we know about our bodies, and how we heal.
In college, I took violin lessons with a graduate student who was writing a thesis on the ergonomics of violin playing. I’m sure I absorbed ideas and approaches of his. I’ve also developed many of my own physical exercises/games over decades of teaching. Some of these I have written about in these posts (for example, the thumb roll, the windshield wiper, joints of the right arm, drumming the fingers, and bodymapping the bow and fingers. These and others are also explored in my technique videos on fiddle-online.com. I think of these exercises as games — not something to accomplish but something to play again and again in order to get better at them. Such games highlight and isolate simple physical movements that are easy to do correctly, while reinforcing efficient motions to improve stamina and accuracy, and to prevent or relieve stress.
It's unrealistic to expect ourselves to learn new ways of moving while playing music; it's best to do brief and simple movement exercises on their own, and then introduce them into our playing. I like to point out that it is very difficult to tell muscles to do something new, but not so hard to remind them to do something they have learned before. Muscles need to become physically aware of how easy it can be to move efficiently. They may not immediately switch over to a new way of moving, so cut them some slack, but if they become comfortable with new and efficient movements, they will be increasingly open to using them.
I often run across learners who have read or been told to hold themselves or their instrument in particular ways. Forcing ourselves into habitual positions and movements that we believe to be "correct" can sometimes do more harm than good. After all, it’s not uncommon to misread, mishear, or miss the context of what we think we learned. We always need to pay attention to our own bodies. Good exercises help our bodies teach themselves, and above all, improve our physical awareness, so we can tell if something feels wrong, or can even devise our own exercises to suit our needs.
To explore musician-related physical concerns, prevention and treatment, take a look at the excellent descriptions, articles, and books on the subject in this extensive list by Paul Marxhausen.
Playing ergonomically, preventing stress, and staying healthy means playing and enjoying our music and our musical friends indefinitely.