Welcome back to Musician’s Maintenance, for musicians who just can’t afford to have pain and injury limit their playing.
This issue is brought to you by me! You take lessons for your instrument, but have you thought of taking lessons for your body? Learn how understanding your body benefits your music and how I may be able to help.
This week I’ve got the first article in a series that I’m calling Musician’s Injury Fundamentals as well as a few exercises you can try to keep your nerves healthy.
I’m Cody, and I appreciate spending the next few minutes in your inbox. Below you’ll find resources and exercises to help you maintain your body at least as well as you maintain your instrument. Let’s get to it!
Full Body Nerve Mobility
A significant portion of pain that effects musicians is due to irritation of nerves. Think conditions like carpal tunnel, thoracic outlet, or really anything that includes numbness and tingling.
All of these issues can be managed or prevented by taking care of your nerves. What nerves really want is blood, movement, and space. Here are a few great exercises to keep the nerves throughout your body happy and healthy.
Watch the videos from doctor of physical therapy Jessica Warnecke to learn the movements, then try the routine below.
- Seated Slump Tensioner: 10 per side. She calls this one “dural mobility.” Only move to the first point where you feel a pull. Stop if you feel pain, numbness or tingling.
- Arm and Neck Mobility: 10 times through the sequence. You can make it easier by keeping your arms higher, or the neck movements smaller.
- Brachial Plexus Tensioners: 10 per side.
- Median Nerve Tensioners: 10 per side
- Ulnar Never Sliders. 10 per side. For those of you who want to be very specific, this is actually a tensioner, not a slider, so go gently.
- Radial Nerve Tensioners: 10 per side
- Femoral Nerve Glides: 10 per side
- Sciatic and Peroneal Nerve Glides: 10 per side
As always, make sure you understand the newsletter exercise ground rules before you start. Also, if this program doesn’t work for you, check out the musicians workout library to find something that does.
Full Body Nerve Mobility | Jessica Warnecke, PT, DPT, OCS
Are You Prepared to Bounce Back From Injury?
I’m putting together an article series called Musician’s Injury Fundamentals. My goal for the series is to teach you how to think about injury as well as give you tools and tactics to try in order to turn around a problem while it is small and manageable.
This first article gives a little background on the complexity of injury in musicians, where we can look for solutions, and why I think there are so many things musicians can do to take care of problems without waiting for the culture of music to catch up.
Give it a look and forward it to musician friends. My goal is to have a new article each week until I’ve put together what I think is a good set of tools for you. Please feel free to give feedback or ask questions along the way. This is meant to be useful for you, so all input is welcome!
Are You Prepared to Bounce Back From Injury? | Musician’s Maintenance
Help Turn the Tide of Injury in Musicians
The rate of injury in musicians is insanely high and it ends more careers than it needs to.
If you want to be a part the solution, one of the easiest things you can do is connect fellow musicians with good resources.
If you find information like this helpful, please consider forwarding this email to a friend, colleague, teacher or classmate. They can also sign up here. Thanks!