Here’s the needle you want to thread.
In a practice session, you want to maintain flow for long enough to maximize the progress you can make, while also giving your body the breaks it needs to avoid overuse pain and injury.
There’s a tension between those two goals. It seems like you have to make a choice.
You can either take care of your body and break up the flow of your practice.
Or you can get in the flow, stay for as long as possible, and deal with the consequences later.
I don’t want you to have to choose. I want you to be able to have both.
So this week I want to get into how I think that you should schedule breaks into your practice sessions and what I think you should do during those breaks to minimize the loss of flow while still giving your body the relief it needs.
I recorded my thoughts on being deliberate and strategic in how you schedule breaks and what you should do.
Deliberate, Strategic Breaks
In addition to the podcast episode, I’ve got four other resources on taking breaks from around the web that I think might interest you. Plus I made a few of my own videos demonstrating simple, but effective microbreaks that you can easily start using during your next practice session, rehearsal, or performance.
Everything is below.
Enjoy!
P.S. As always if you have feedback, requests for topics you are interested in, or just want to say hi, go ahead and hit reply and your message will go straight to my inbox!
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musician’s maintenance: resources
Microbreaks | Musician’s Maintenance
Here are my videos demonstrating the base microbreak positions that I go over in the podcast and that come from the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies article below. They are quite simple. Give them a look and try them out during your next practice session.
Microbreaks | Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies
Here’s a link to the article on microbreaks that I hand out to my patients. Unfortunately the articl is behind a paywall. If you’re part of a University, you may have access. If you don’t, I wouldn’t recommend paying for access. I took the descriptions of the microbreak positions that it recommends and put them in the video below.
Microbreaks | Jason Sulliman
Jason Sulliman is a trombone player with an interest in musician’s health. On his website, he has a page dedicated to microbreaks and links to about 30 different videos of microbreaks that you can do sitting, standing or on the floor.
Dynamic Work Space | Nutritious Movement
Taking microbreaks is great, but what about constantly varying your position. Here’s a video of an hour in the work life movement guru Katy Bowman. It’s interesting to see that despite the fact that she is writing, she moves all over the place. It may not perfectly translate to the life of a musician, since maintaining a good position playing is more important than it is when you write. However, I think there may be some potential to vary what’s under your feet using the ½ foam roller you’ll see in the video, which may provide some small bit of variation in how you use your body without having to compromise your position while playing.
Using Your Cell Phone on Breaks is a Bad Idea | Curiosity.com
No, unfortunately scrolling through social media does not count as a deliberate, strategic break. According to the article above using your phone as a break from a complex task leads to worse performance after the task. If you want to practice like a pro, then put the phone down and move your body!
musician’s maintenance: tool of the week
As I mentioned above, one of my favorite parts of the dynamic workspace video above is the used of the ½ foam roller. You can stretch your calf, offset your weight or even do a little balance work while standing and still maintain your posture from the waist up. If you are interested in doing this at home, the one she uses in the video is the 6” high x 12” long size, or I found a cheap, Prime eligible one through Amazon that you can pick up here. (Affiliate).
musician’s maintenance: sharing
Please forward this issue of Musician’s Maintenance on to a friend, teacher, colleague, or any other musician you think may be interested. Thank you!