Welcome back to Musician’s Maintenance, for musicians who don’t want to be an injury statistic.
If you are dealing with pain, want to avoid injury, or are curious about strategies to maximize your playing while staying healthy, then let’s talk. I offer a free 15 minute phone consultation to chat about what you are having trouble with. Here’s where you can go to schedule.
I’m Dr. Cody Weisbach, and I appreciate spending the next few minutes in your inbox. Below you’ll find the workout of the week to help maintain your body at least as well as you maintain your instrument.
Let’s go!
Move: A 3-Minute Posture Relief Routine
It seems like musicians are constantly told that posture is the cause of their problems. Unfortunately it isn’t that simple.
Posture is important but often misunderstood. Injury research does not support the idea poor posture causes injury and the “ideal” posture may not be right for your body.
Instead of trying to remember to stand up tall all the time (I can’t do that either!), another approach is to exercise the muscles and that help to improve posture automatically. Even better, exercising these same muscles can also reduce your risk of playing related injury. Win-win.
Here’s a great group of exercises from physical therapist Dr. Josh Elzey that can do just that in only 3 minutes. Watch the videos, then try the routine below.
- Prone Retraction + Extension: 5-10 repetitions. Make sure you get those shoulder blades to squeeze.
- Prone Behind the Neck Press: 5-10 repetitions.
- Prone Around the World: 5-10 repetitions. If you can’t make it all the way around, or it feels too stressful you can either widen your grip, or hold an exercise band instead of a stick.
- If you feel good and have a few more minutes, then go ahead run through the program 1 or 2 more times.
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 Musician’s Workout Library to find something that does.
3 Min Posture Relief Routine | Josh Elzey, PT, DPT
Help Turn the Tide of Injury in Musicians
The rate of injury in musicians is insanely high and injury 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!