Hello and welcome back to Musician’s Maintenance where it’s my job to connect you with the best, science-based exercise and performance health information for musicians.
Here’s what I’ve got this week 1) Exercise for professional orchestral musicians with a home DVD 2) A simple exercise to keep your finger tendons healthy 3) What you need to know about tissue healing.
(Note: If you enjoy these newsletters, please consider forwarding this email to a friend, colleague, teacher or classmate. They can sign up here and then you won’t be the only one you know doing tendon gliding exercises in your warm-up).
Let’s go!
1) Research Review: Exercise for professional orchestral musicians with a home DVD
How should professional orchestral musicians exercise to accomplish the tasks of preventing (or reducing the effects of) injury, supporting playing, and not causing pain in the process? It’s a tough question, but luckily a group of researchers in Australia have investigated this in a series of nicely done studies.
In this Research Review, I’ll take you through the third study in the series (you can find the first here, and the second here), where the researches look to see if they can replicate their positive results using an exercise DVD rather than in-person classes.
Listen: Research Review: Exercise for professional orchestral musicians with a home DVD | Musician’s Maintenance
2) A simple exercise to keep your finger tendons healthy
As a musician, your fingers are probably the most important part of your body. They are also some of the most common sites of overuse injuries. If you aren’t already doing something to keep your fingers healthy, then now might be a good time to start.
Here’s an article on tendon gliding exercises. Gently gliding your finger tendons is a great way to keep both the tendons and nerves in your hand and wrist healthy. Plus it’s simple to do and doesn’t need to take much time. The article below has a brief description and pictures of the sequence of movements.
I would recommend doing 5-10 of these sequences on each hand (you can do them at the same time) as a part of your warm-up. Ideally after doing a full body warm-up and before you begin warming up on your instrument. Give them a try and let me know what you think.
Read: Tendon gliding exercises for hand injuries | Hand Therapy Group
3) What you need to know about how your body heals
Understanding how your body heals is key to working through painful problems. If you want to heal as fast as possible, you need to match what you do with the phase of healing that you are in.
Unfortunately we can get in such a rush to heal, that we can do too much too soon. The fact of the matter is that there is only so fast that your body can heal (no matter how badly you want it to heal faster). Furthermore, how fast you heal varies greatly depending on the area that was injured.
Here’s a nice article that will help you better understand how you heal. It goes over the different body tissues, normal phases of healing, why various tissues heal differently, and how to optimize your healing time after injury.
Read: What you need to know about tissue healing | The Prehab Guys
Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:
1. 5 Minute Morning Mobility: A 5 minute mobility flow to release the tension in muscles that matter so you’re body is ready for all the playing you’ll do that day. Just $9.99 or FREE if you refer a friend (see below).
2. 10 Minute Evening Recovery: 10 minutes of gentle stretching the most important areas for musicians. Includes nerve glides and proper finger tendon stretches. It’s the best thing you can do for your body. Just $19.99 or FREE if you refer 3 friends (3 below).
3. The Musician Specific Strength Program: The best thing you can you can do to prevent injury is get stronger in the muscles that matter. This program will transform your body so it never limits your music. It’s comprehensive and provides maximum benefit for the minimum time possible.