Welcome back to Musician’s Maintenance! If you’re the type of musician who understands the importance of taking care of your body, this newsletter helps make it easier.
This week’s edition is sponsored by The Ultimate Music Business Summit. Music school is amazing for teaching you how to be a musician, but it’s not great at teaching you how to succeed as a musician.
The Ultimate Music Business Summit will help you take control of your music business and offer a variety of valuable strategies for increasing your income and growing your impact.
The 3-day summit runs from Jan 6-8, 2022 and tickets start at just $7 if you register by 10/31/21. Get your tickets here!
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 and few resources to help you maintain your body at least as well as you maintain your instrument.
Let’s go!
Move: Unlock Your Mid-Back
Keeping your middle back moving is key for anyone who spends long hours in the same position. If effects everything from the neck and shoulder, down to the wrist and hand. Here’s a great self test and middle back mobility routine to get you going.
Watch the videos to get an idea of the movements, then do the self test. Next do the routine below. Finally re-test and see what has changed.
- Pre-Test: Sit up tall. Cross your arms across your chest. Twist all the way to the right. Pause and breathe. Twist all the way to the left, pause and breath. Note how far you move in each direction. Note if one direction feels stiffer than the other.
- Prone Rotation: 5 per side.
- Roller Assisted Rotation: 10 repetitions per side. If you don’t have a roller, just slide the forearm along the ground.
- Seated Flexion and Extension: 10 slow repetitions. Make sure you are breathing.
- Sphinx Rotation: 10 repetitions per side.
- Run through the program 1-3 times.
- Post-Test: Repeat the test above and notice if it feels easier to move.
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.
Unlock Your Mid Back | Katie Claire, DC
Are you the type of musician that takes care of your body?
When it comes to habits, we like to think about results. Avoid injury, hurt less, lose weight, play better, read more, etc. But that results focused approach may set us up for failure.
That is one of the arguments of James Clear, author of the book Atomic Habits in this short 8 minute talk entitled How to Get 1% Better Every Day.
In the talk, he argues that we should first start with the identity you want to have. Who you want to be. Then figure out the smallest possible step you can take to start acting like that kind of person.
So, are you the kind of musician who takes care of your body? Do you do the kinds of things that that type of person does? If you are reading this, then you’ve at least taken the first step.
The next smallest step is to scroll back up the the exercises above. Pick the one that seems easiest to you and do just 1 repetition of it. Try doing just that for a week or two and I bet you’ll start to see things change.
How to Get 1% Better Every Day | James Clear via YouTube
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!