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 $14 if you register by 11/30/21. Get your tickets here!
I’m Dr. Cody Weisbach, and I appreciate spending the next few minutes in your inbox. This week I’ve got a few great ideas to keep your hands healthy, as well as an excellent group of interviews on musician’s health.
Let’s go!
Move: Hand Helpers
Hands and fingers are some of the most common injuries for musicians. Making sure you are doing recovery work for those little muscles and tendons can be the difference between injury and performing comfortably.
Here’s a great group of finger and hand exercises from violist/musician’s health and movement expert Kayliegh Miller.
Watch the video to learn what to do and try the routine below. You’ll need some tools for this one. In the video, I think she uses this set of massage balls and some finger massage rings like these.
You can use almost any kind of ball that is comfortable to you for the hand massage, but I haven’t found a free substitute for the finger massage rings.
- Palm massage: 30-60 seconds of slow rolling on each palm. If you find a spot that is a little more sore, give that area some extra attention. Just make sure you go slow and keep relaxed breathing. Make sure you spend some time on the thumb area of the palm as well.
- Finger Ring Rolls: 5 slow rolls up and down each finger.
- Finger Extensions: 10 slow repetitions opening up the fingers with the rubber band or hair scrunchy around the finger tips.
- If it feels good and you have a little extra time, run through the program another 1 or two 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 Maintenance Workout Library to find something that does.
Hand Helpers | Kayleigh Miller via Instagram
Musician’s Injury Awareness Week
For the week of November 15 through 21, the Things Musician’s Don’t Talk About Podcast is running a musician’s injury awareness week.
Over the course of the week, they are interviewing several experts in the field. The lineup looks great and includes…
- One of my favorite musician’s health people – Francesca Leo on 11/15
- Pianist Peter Regan on 11/16
- Violinist Sophia Kannathasan on 11/17
- Professor of bass trombone Bob Hughes on 11/18
- Pianist Songeun Choi on 11/19
- Producer and DJ Murphy Robertson on 11/20
- And finally another of my favorite musician’s health people – Angela McCustin on 11/21
Head over to their website to learn more and listen to these great guests share their stories and offer advice to help you spend less time in pain and more time playing the music you love.
Musician’s Injury Awareness Week | Things Musician’s Don’t Talk About Podcast
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!