Piano related hand injury

[koopakool]

Hello, I wanted to ask if anyone ever had a hand injury while practicing and pushing a little too hard? My left hand pinky, knuckle and wrist have been hurting for almost 2 months now, it started while practicing. Like I pulled a tendon or squeezed a nerve.  The doctor told me to stop the piano for a while and wait. Can I do that really? I play less often now, stopped practicing Liszt (damn you Liszt), and don't play for long periods. I tried putting ice, warm up, massages, stretches, but no significant amelioration.    Any tips?

Thanks!

[keyboardclass]

The first place to start is to look for unnecessary tension in your technique.

[lina3]

It does seem like your hands were too tense while playing, that's probably why it happened. If it continues to hurt, see the doctor again.

[49410enrique]

you might want to go see a 'hand specialist' there are docs out there that focus exclusively on this, also consider consulting a naturopathic doctor to on what you can do nutritionally and perhaps unconventionally to help speep up healing.

yes you can hurt (and sometimes permanently) your hands pretty bad with not just bad practice but even 'over practice' even when you have a good and well developed approach, i.e. scriabin pretty much killed his concert career working on a the liszt don juan fantasy (this is attributed as one of the reasons why he began to focus on composition much more from that point  forward).

so yes be careful, be conservative in you rehap and consult some competent experts in their fields related to this and you might very well come out with little or no permanent issues, in the meantime continue practicing without know what caused the issue or will alleviate or make it worse and you run the risk of damaging your hand(s) further.

good luck

[amelialw]

you could consider seeing a muscle therapy specialist too...i got injured about a year+ ago. Last year it became so bad that the pain shot all the way down my arms to my fingers; that's when i took action. A friend who's a physiotherapist reccomended me this place which I went to once a week for a total of 4 sessions. Aside from helping me to release the tension I was also taught exercises to help release tension& prevent injury.

Have already fully recovered since then