Avoiding Tendinitis For Musicians
I used to have terrible pain in my lower back, in my shoulders and in my neck due to sitting too much at my instrument and otherwise. I am going to share what helped me get rid of all of that pain and become flexible again in this article. We’ll go over a few principles to apply when practicing and playing as well as a few key stretches to do pre and post practice session.
Principle #1: Heat
You want to warm up. You’ve heard it said a thousand times & there’s a good reason for that. You are at a much higher risk of injuring yourself if you play technically challenging material before raising your body temperature. This happens automatically as you start to play. Maybe you noodle a little bit & 10min later your hands are warm & red. That is good. That is what you want. Even a little sweat doesn’t hurt, but not an effort sweat, a heat sweat. The reason I make this distinction is that even better than warming up by playing is warming up before playing. When your muscles are engaged, relaxed & warm before you even play your first note you are at a much lower risk for injury. There’s also the added bonus that the first notes you play in that high heat state will sound & feel alive immediately upon picking up your instrument.
Here’s a few (very obvious) methods to raise body temperature:
Wear warm cloths. (Do I really need to say that? Anyways)
Stretching gets the blood flowing. Very effective to heat yourself up. (We’ll expend on that in a second)
Keep an insulated mug/thermos/thing close by to sip hot water a bit before & during the practice session. Yes it can be other beverages(tasty sidekick doesn’t hurt😋) but the point is that H2O has a very high thermal capacity & will give all of its heat to you when you drink it.
Principle #2: Relaxation
That’s were stretching comes in. By stretching the muscles involved in the motion of playing your instrument as well as stretching the muscles supporting those muscles down to your entire body, a lot of the accumulated tension will be released. You don’t need any more tension than what’s required to feel the beat with your chest & move the specific muscles involved with your specific instrument. You can get carried away by the good vibes & move more than necessary but always from a state of relaxed alertness.
Here’s two of my favorite stretches. They are good as long as you are a human regardless of instrument:
Feet shoulder width apart. Touch the floor with your palm. If you aren’t that flexible yet, go as far as it’ll go and then breath out as you stretch even more.
Next one comes from the qi-gong practices if I am not mistaken(don’t quote me on that). It involves twisting your whole body & loosening your joints. You’ll want to anchor your feet a bit wider than your shoulders & point your toes outwards slightly to keep a good balance while you swing your arms on both sides as far as is comfortable while looking straight ahead. When you swing your arms to the left, rotating your rib cage, your weight should transfer to your left leg & you should feel a stretch & loosening of the back, neck & inner opposite thigh. Then right, then left, then right. Be like a clock. It’s a very meditative practice. Breath in sink with the motions. Start by breathing in for 2 rotations, than out for 2. Increase the number of swings per breath as much as you can.
The slower & more conscious you make these stretches the better. Ultimately I can give you a thousand exemples of stretches but what will benefit you the most is using your awareness to locate where the tension & stiffness is located in your specific body & work from there. Use your intuition & intelligence to figure out your own stretches. But don’t over do it. There’s a real possibility of going too far into a stretch & hurt yourself if you are not used to it.
Another important part of staying relaxed is to breath slowly & deeply as you are practicing. Holding totally full & empty breaths is great when you are trying to get mystical type experiences & there’s a lot of resources documenting those types of breathing practices out there, but you don’t want that when practicing. You want deep, slow, steady & stable breath for playing. Having shallow breaths & holding it unconsciously has the effect of contracting & tightening your entire state of being & is to be avoided. This kind of deep breathing is also good to calm the nerves & quiet the thoughts. Good posture encourages this kind of breathing which leads us the the third principle.
Principle #3: Balance
We teased the importance of balance while describing the stretches, but there’s a few more points the be made.
First of, don’t be slouching in practice. What slouching does is it puts you out of balance & the only way your body has to compensate for this lack of balance is by tensing & holding your weight with strength instead of the natural grace & ease that is associated good balance. You don’t want sheer strength. You want balanced & relaxed power. Imagine there’s a string pulling your spine from the top of your head. Move your shoulder blades back & notice how effortless it feels to stay up right when you have good balance & posture. If you don’t feel it’s effortless, you haven’t achieved good balance. Good balance feels like a ball that is being pulled equally in all directions at once such that it stays totally still.
Second of, balance is a mental thing as much as it is a physical thing. But that is for another discussion. There’s too much to say here & that would be besides to purpose of this post. However, the reason I mention it is that if you struggle with pain when playing your instrument, I would encourage you to investigate how your mind might be playing a role in that. There is such a thing as a psychosomatic ailment. What that means is the mind is not functioning properly & is spilling over, creating problems in the body. Just think about how stage fright will make some people nauseous. Some people will literally throw up from stage fright alone. Some will get cold sweats or digestive issues just by thinking sideways. They didn’t eat anything bad. They didn’t catch a cold. Their mind is running amok. Mind changing the physical. That’s a whole can of worms, but worth contemplating.
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There’s much more to be said about keeping your body fit to play to the best of your abilities & I don’t claim to know all of it. What I laid out here are principles I observed to be true during my own practice & at this point in my musical journey I don’t get pain anymore. Even when playing for extended periods. I just keep in mind to take breaks every now and again to shake my arms, removing the lactic acid from my muscles, as well as going through my stretching routine again(takes about 5-10min). It’s also good to reset the mind by allowing it to soften & wonder around. It contrasts with the one pointed attention of the musical state & I find it reinvigorates my focus for the next bout of practice. It’s not my back but my minds exhaustion that is the bottle neck at this point(which is a very good thing, an exhausted mind after practice means you’ve stretched it to its limits & it feels amazing).
All of these principles(and others that I overlooked here) translate to good technique. That’s what good technique IS. All of the principles working together at once.
