Correct Time Division

One of the most important things that I learned to do for preventing myself from reinjure, is to divide my practicing time correctly. By that, I can control and reduce the pressure on my body and control it.

See how I do it:

First: I organize my time, so I can divide my daily practicing routine in smaller amounts and spread them during the day. By that, I don’t build up pressure and I give a good rest to my body and arms. Another interesting fact is that after some time, while practicing, our concentration rate is gradationally reducing. Without being able to highly concentrate, we tend to make a lot of wrong movements which makes damage. So, tray to find the right amount of time that fits your, mentally and physically! And spread it over your day….

Second: In my divided practicing time, I take 15-30 seconds of resting between the exercises. I’ve notice, that if I don’t pay attention to it, I can find myself playing all of my exercises one after another. You can use this time for stretching your body, fixing your breath and body position, looking and understanding the next exercise… It really works better!

But should I?

In the last few days I had some pessimistic conversations with people that made me wonder… apparently, there allot of players which quite accepted the fact of injuries as part of nature or as a "certain routine" that a professional player have to face…

So, I'm thinking to myself… Is it possible that those people, who dedicate their career to music making, just ignore the fact that there is something wrong??? Are they missing something? Or am I just naive?
I will quote:


"Welcome to the club of professional players… we see how people come back every year to get treatment. You have to understand that its part of your profession " - My physiotherapist.

"If it hurts around the area of the elbow, it's a good sign! And it means that you work correctly. You need to get used to it " – My teacher for classic piano playing.

"I'm used to it, I', playing over the pain" accordion player that I' working with.

Effects of activity on healing

All of us how suffers for problems in the tendon function, face the same dilemma:should we stop playing for a while? Apparently, even for this question there is more than one answer.

In animal models, extensive studies have been conducted to investigate the effects of mechanical strain in the form of activity level on tendon injury and healing. While stretching can disrupt healing during the initial inflammatory phase, it has been shown that controlled movement of the tendons after about one week following an acute injury can help to promote the synthesis of collagen by the tenocytes, leading to increased tensile strength and diameter of the healed tendons and fewer adhesions than tendons that are immobilized. In chronic tendon injuries, mechanical loading has also been shown to stimulate fibroblast proliferation and collagen synthesis along with collagen realignment, all of which promote repair and remodeling.

Lets talk about Anatomic!

To understand a bit more about what are we dealing with, we need to take a closer look, and learn about the anatomy of the hand structure. Today we gonna find out, about the part that we all heard about: the "Tendons"

A tendon (or sinew) is a tough band of fibrous connective tissue that usually connects muscle to bone and is capable of withstanding tension. Tendons are similar to ligaments and fascia as they are all made of collagen except that ligaments join one bone to another bone, and fascia connect muscles to other muscles. Tendons and muscles work together and can only exert a pulling force. Normal healthy tendons are mostly composed of parallel arrays of collagen fibers closely packed together.

Tendons are subject to many types of injuries. There are various forms of tendinopathies or tendon injuries due to overuse. These types of injuries generally result in inflammation and degeneration or weakening of the tendons, which may eventually lead to tendon rupture.

That's it for now,

I hope I generated some curiosity for you to go and explore more about the subject!

We are not Athletes!

One of the equalization which I hear from people- is between musicians and athletes...

Its true, there are some imaginary lines between the two professions, but I find it important to explain why this comparison is dangerous:

Athletes and musicians need to work and practice allot, a lot, on a daily basis to improve their mental and physical abilities.. Both have to understand how to treat their body and how to make it work with full awareness. The difference lies in the way that our body reacts under the power of stressful and powerful movements...

To build up a muscle tissue, you need to make enough afford to actually destroy parts from the muscle, so it will renew it self to be stronger - "no pain, no gain"... And this method is being used by athletes. while in playing, we do use our muscle, but we also can hurt the tendons which can't be renew like the muscle tissue... and wont get stronger by overuse it!

"If our hands feel weak- a frequent symptom of injury -we think the answer is to do strengthening exercises. In fact this may only make the problem worse. If a structure is injured, working it harder will not promote healing. Some (very few) comparisons of piano playing with sports may be useful, but for the most part the sports analogy is misleading and harmful."

Rotation

Re-Injury

Today... the thing that I most afraid from, its the re-injury...
As I learn more and more about this subject, I understand that I'm doing the right thins for healing my self.. but still... this subject it so complex and effects every individual differently so its hard to be really sure.

Beside that, the mane problem with the tendons, is that you don't feel the stress you are making in real time. The damage build's up, step by step, in a little repeating movements (The hourly rate of repetition for sixteenth notes at a metronome setting of 120 is 28,800?!@#$!), and its accumulate until it breaks... unfortunately, I've been there for many times.

Most of the pianists doesn't realize that the only thing that relay work, in the long term, is taking a areal responsibility of the situation. They go to doctors, physical therapists, chiropractors, acupuncturists, nutritionists, massage therapists--the list is endless. All of these can helpful and also very interesting - But not a long term solution!

believe me, I've tried it all :)