Musical performance related pain isn’t like rolling your ankle. If you roll your ankle, you know what happened and you have a pretty good sense of what the recovery will look like.
Pain related to playing can seem to come up out of no where. Sometimes it just gradually arises. Sometimes a pain or ache that used to go away on it’s own all of a sudden stays for weeks on end. It can feel very random.
But if you know where to look, there are patterns. And if you can predict when you are more likely to start hurting, some simple adjustments early on can be very effective.
The majority of pain musicians experience is due to overuse. Overuse is a simple equation where what your body is asked to do ends up greater than what your body can do.
The good news is that your body can always adapt and gradually tolerate more. However, these adaptations happens slowly. You have probably been playing your instrument for so long that you don’t appreciate how much time your body has had to gradually increase its tolerance to your current playing ability.
In the short term, changes that seem small can actually be quite large and challenging for your body.
So here are four times when pain is more likely to interrupt your playing.
A change in instrument
A common example of an instrument change that can cause problems is making the switch from violin to viola.
The fact that it is a little heavier and a little longer will load the left shoulder a little more. Multiply that load by how much you typically play and your shoulder can easily get to a place where the tendon is asked to do more than it is ready for.
Going from a clarinet to a saxophone requires you to learn different fingerings while your hand is held in a different shape, which can load your tendons in ways that they may not be accustomed to.
The change may not even be as significant as going to from one instrument to a different type of instrument. It might just be that the subtle differences between two instruments of the same type is enough to cause trouble adapting.
For example going from one piano to another where the action is different might be enough to spark a problem.
A change in teacher or playing style
Similar to changing instruments, a change in teacher or playing style can influence the amount of stress on your body.
A new teacher may adjust your position or technique. The goal of these changes is to make you more efficient and therefore more skilled in the long term.
The trade-off is that the new ways of doing things are different from what your body is used to doing, and will therefore make you less efficient in the short term. During this time, playing will be a little more physically stressful on your body. If you don’t appreciate that and just keeping going about your typical routine, pain can creep up on you.
Changes in playing style can create a similar short term inefficiencies. Classical, jazz, marching, pop all have different variations of what makes them challenging. Your quality of play may not be effected, but because you are doing something different, or potentially in a different position (or moving) there can be more stress on the body.
A change in stress levels
Physical stressors like the above obviously play a big role in developing pain. Emotional stress can makes it own contribution too.
You may want to believe that pain is a purely physical experience, but it is not. Pain is a biopsychosocial experience and things like stress levels can strongly influence pain.
This isn’t to say that it’s all in your head. Stress has very physical manifestations, both in terms muscle contractions as well as the hormones that are in your blood stream. Both can influence the onset of pain in situations that would not be painful in a non-stressful situation.
None of this is to say that you need to completely avoid stress. Playing and performing music is inherently stressful. That’s part of the reason that it’s fun. It’s just important to recognize when you are getting stressed and not only take action to manage that stress, but also take action to minimize the risk of onset of pain as well.
A change in your practice habits
Pain related to changing practice habits is probably more common than the other 3 above combined. If you are serious enough about playing music to read an article like this, then I bet you practice. A lot.
Some of the most common profiles for musicians developing pain are practice related.
You come across a difficult passage and you become somewhat obsessed in getting it. So you practice for 1 or 2 hours longer than your planned session.
You have a performance or audition coming up. So you drastically increase your practice time.
You were a good player in high school and now your are majoring in music in college. Music quickly goes from an extracurricular activity to your main focus and the time on your instrument skyrockets.
You go to a music camp and the amount you play each day doubles or triples.
Do any of those sound familiar?
I probably don’t have to walk you through it, but in all of these scenarios the “what your body is asked to do” side of the overuse equation rapidly increases and the “what your body can do” side of the equation doesn’t have a prayer of keeping up.
Once things get too out of balance, your body is going to let you know about it, and it lets you know about it by making you hurt.
Am I Describing You?
Have you experienced pain related to your playing?
If so, did it match any of the profiles above?
Are there others that I’ve missed?
Leave a comment and let me know!
Preventing Injuries
These are all preventable injuries. However, there’s an all too common perception in the music community that if you modify your practice then you are sacrificing your ability and potential as a musician.
I’m convinced that you can keep your body healthy and minimize pain and that it doesn’t mean sacrificing anything.
In fact, I think that it has the possibility of making you even better.
If you are interested in exploring these ideas, I would encourage you to sign up for the email newsletter. You’ll get injury prevention and treatment advice specifically tailored for serious musicians delivered to your inbox for free. If you want to know more about what joining that list means, then check out the newsletter page.
If you made it all the way to the bottom here, thanks for reading!