Hi, Are injuries the result of bad technique or over practicing

[rovis77]

Hi, I have a question: Are injuries the result of bad technique or over practicing?. I practice 6 hours a day every week and I rest very little, sometimes my hands hurt, is this the result of bad technique or playing too much without resting?

[iansinclair]

There are at least two classes of injury which pianists can have -- overwork injuries and strains from poor technique.  You could be looking at either one -- but I would bet that 6 hours a day with little rest is causing overwork (repetitive stress) problems.  No harm to practicing 6 hours a day -- but it might be well to break that up into sessions no more than an hour or so long at a whack, and it might also be well to take a day a week and do relatively little practicing on that day.

[pianoplayer002]

Injuries are a result of over practising with a bad technique.

[Bob]

Answer:  Yes or yes.


You could say over practicing is bad technique and then it falls under bad technique.

[louispodesta]

Hi, I have a question: Are injuries the result of bad technique or over practicing?. I practice 6 hours a day every week and I rest very little, sometimes my hands hurt, is this the result of bad technique or playing too much without resting?

Like, I am an idiot, and I did not think you would post the same question on another website.  Accordingly, I post the same reply:

["They are one and the same, friend. And two very famous perfect examples of how this can manifest itself, are God Krishna Leon Fleisher and God Krishna Gary Graffman.

The first has made an extremely successful second career out of being injured, and the second has done so in a minor sense with his paralyzed right hand since 1976 (and also being Lang Lang's coach).

Well, Earl Wild spilled the beans in his memoir when he pointed out that, when he was on the faculty at Juilliard, Fleisher and Graffman's students used to seek him out with regularity to cure their injuries - so much for the mysteries of focal dystonia. I did not write that, Earl Wild did."]

In conclusion, I make the following two recommendations:

1) My coach has written a highly sourced book entitled "What Every Pianist Needs To Know About the Body."(www.pianomap.com). You would be hard pressed to find a keyboard department chair in the U.S. who does not have a copy of this very valuable guide.

2) Find yourself a certified Taubman teacher, and then follow the advice of George Matthias' teacher. Matthias was the head of the keyboard department at the Paris Conservatory, and his teacher was a pianist by the name of Fredryk Chopin!

He (Chopin) insisted that his students practice no more than two hours a day. And, that they spend the rest of their time discovering all there is to life, which in his opinion was essential to the development of musical skills.

If you continue to do what you are doing, then it is only a matter of time until you experience chronic injury. I sincerely hope that does not happen, and if you desire further advice, please send me a private message on the subject.

Good luck to you.
 

[j_menz]

I am an idiot

'nuff sed. 

[dima_76557]

Hi, I have a question: Are injuries the result of bad technique or over practicing?. I practice 6 hours a day every week and I rest very little, sometimes my hands hurt, is this the result of bad technique or playing too much without resting?

From a bad technique, of course. If your technique is good, you could theoretically play 48 hours in a row and not injure yourself. If your technique is bad, then 20 minutes with repertoire you can't really handle can be more than enough to get injured.

Now the question remains: what is "bad" technique? Partly lack of know-how and partly mental laziness:
1) You have not learned to pre-hear/expect a qualitative sound result before moving;
2) You have not learned to move efficiently to get the results you want;
3) The sound result you get does not correspond with what you expected but you do not take action to change it.

[dima_76557]

["They are one and the same, friend. And two very famous perfect examples of how this can manifest itself, are God Krishna Leon Fleisher and God Krishna Gary Graffman.

The first has made an extremely successful second career out of being injured, and the second has done so in a minor sense with his paralyzed right hand since 1976 (and also being Lang Lang's coach).

Well, Earl Wild spilled the beans in his memoir when he pointed out that, when he was on the faculty at Juilliard, Fleisher and Graffman's students used to seek him out with regularity to cure their injuries - so much for the mysteries of focal dystonia. I did not write that, Earl Wild did."]

With all due respect, Mr. Podesta, but this is a misunderstanding, and you do the OP, yourself, Earl Wild and everybody else mentioned in your post (not necessarily in that order) a great disservice. Both pianists got hurt because they refused to listen to their bodies giving signals that something was wrong. It is for now unclear where focal distonia comes from, but to link it to incompetence on the part of the victims is simply unfair.

[nyiregyhazi]

With all due respect, Mr. Podesta, but this is a misunderstanding, and you do the OP, yourself, Earl Wild and everybody else mentioned in your post (not necessarily in that order) a great disservice. Both pianists got hurt because they refused to listen to their bodies giving signals that something was wrong. It is for now unclear where focal distonia comes from, but to link it to incompetence on the part of the victims is simply unfair.

Given how much utter nonsense he's stated in these threads (a case in point being the nonsensical casual assertion that all heads of department would have Thomas mark's book- busy pianists and teachers often have little time for books on technique, regardless of whether they should) I would never trust a word he says as credible or an accurate representation of someone else's words. However, I have to say I agree on the basic diagnosis here. Graffman is not a pianist I've seen on film but he attributed his injury to playing octaves with his third finger. Not as in the odd one for legato but all octaves. Fleisher simply looks very tense and stiff on all films I've seen.

I don't know about the anecdotal claim that their students too got injured but it's possible. If a student is pushed to musical extremes by a demanding teacher who doesn't know how to equip them with the goods to do it safely, they may well suffer. It's scarcely better when a teacher leaves a student in an easy comfort zone where everything is dull and understated, but a teacher who is musically demanding yet offer nothing about the means to achieve things without physical efforts may very well be dangerous. It's not necessarily causing injury with bad technical advice, but a case of failing to convey what it takes to follow musical ideals safely.

PS. Louis keeps making claims about Thomas mark's book and also says he has been learning lots of big concertos. Yet the only film he has posted has him bobbing around awkwardly and stiffly, without any discernable musical voicing, in a brahms intermezzo. When are we going to see the results from the book plus two hours per day? Some of the advice about the body is very good in that book, but it contains very little about the mosr basic essential of healthy pianistic technique - ie safely generating plenty of movement in the fingers without tightening the arm. The biggest issues are simply absent from the book. It's much more a book on the body than on what a pianist REALLY needs to know.

[dima_76557]

Graffman is not a pianist I've seen on film but he attributed his injury to playing octaves with his third finger. Not as in the odd one for legato but all octaves.

That's stupidity, not poor technique. However healthy your technique is, if you start doing that, the mechanism will fail at a certain moment. He did that to replace his fourth and fifth, I believe, that got hurt when he bumped unexpectly hard against the keybed of one of the instruments he was giving a concert on. Also not proof of a bad technique. This can happen to virtually anyone. He should have simply given his body time to heal. The show had to go on, however, contracts had been signed, etc. etc.

Fleisher simply looks very tense and stiff on all films I've seen.

Looking stiff and being stiff are different things. He admitted himself in his interviews that at a certain point, he simply wasn't listening to his body anymore, went on when he should have stopped, and paid a high price for that. Again: rather forced circumstances than mere incompetence.

I don't know about the anecdotal claim that their students too got injured but it's possible. If a student is pushed to musical extremes by a demanding teacher who doesn't know how to equip them with the goods to do it safely, they may well suffer.

We have to blame the system for that, and not the artists who teach there. At such a level, only master classes are given and good technique is assumed. If a student is technically not ready to work with that artist, then he/she should solve the problems elsewhere because many of those artists simply don't know how they accomplish their art in the material sense; the mechanics simply happened intuitively while they were prodigies.

[Bob]

Don't forget good rest, sleep, nutrition, etc.  That factors in.  If it's great technique but just overused, the body has to adjust.

[louispodesta]

Don't forget good rest, sleep, nutrition, etc.  That factors in.  If it's great technique but just overused, the body has to adjust.

Thank you Bob, however, physiologically, it just does not work that way.  I know of a fellow student, who won a very famous competition, who is now a booking agent.  And, he studied under one of the top two teachers in the world.  His hands are permanently broken.

The ligaments, tendons, bones, and cartilages in his hand do not respond to its particular epistemology, which is what this discussion involves.

The anatomy of the human hand was not designed to play the piano, guitar, or any other  instrument.  Therefore, in order to do so, one as to obey and adapt to the physical dynamics associated with that particular causality.

[j_menz]

epistemology, which is what this discussion involves.

Your dictionary broken? 

[flashyfingers]

I like this thread.

If rest does not fix it or make it feel better, then it is probably an injury due to poor technique.

Normal overuse and overworking of your hands can usually be treated with rest, as your hands recover and your body produces proper fluids and antibodies and fights any inflammation.

Knowing how to rest and how to adjust to your body's conditions is part of becoming a wholesome musician. Patience is a virtue.

[dima_76557]

If rest does not fix it or make it feel better, then it is probably an injury due to poor technique.

To spoil the simplicity of this conclusion: What technique? The piano technique may initially be good enough, but we have other techniques too that may trigger injuries, which we then take to our instrument: typing on a keyboard all day long, carrying improperly balanced shopping bags for more than 5 minutes, working with vibrating equipment, and in general poor posture (even while sleeping) and any activities that require us to work, sit, etc. in an awkward position.

[flashyfingers]

To spoil the simplicity of this conclusion: What technique? The piano technique may initially be good enough, but we have other techniques too that may trigger injuries, which we then take to our instrument: typing on a keyboard all day long, carrying improperly balanced shopping bags for more than 5 minutes, working with vibrating equipment, and in general poor posture (even while sleeping) and any activities that require us to work, sit, etc. in an awkward position.

Don't you just hate that?!

[outin]

To spoil the simplicity of this conclusion: What technique? The piano technique may initially be good enough, but we have other techniques too that may trigger injuries, which we then take to our instrument: typing on a keyboard all day long, carrying improperly balanced shopping bags for more than 5 minutes, working with vibrating equipment, and in general poor posture (even while sleeping) and any activities that require us to work, sit, etc. in an awkward position.

Exactly...There are so many ways to injure one's hands, that only looking at what you do at the piano is not enough. Where I work about 50% of people have occasional or permanent hand injuries and not many of them play any instrument. Relying on doctors does not seem to help much, because these people have little understanding of their body and what they are doing wrong.

Playing the piano was what opened my eyes to the misuse of my system and it even fixed some problems I had with my wrists. After I fixed the worse problems with my technique, the hands are not the first thing that give me trouble if I play for many hours, it's the back, neck and shoulders. But when the neck and shoulders get bad enough, the hands will suffer as well due to nerve compressions.

[dima_76557]

Exactly...There are so many ways to injure one's hands, that only looking at what you do at the piano is not enough.

When I look at all those beautiful girls in the Moscow subway typing messages on their phones with cramped thumbs only at horrendous speed, then I ask myself: How can that not affect the fluent execution of a scale on the piano? They are forced to shake off the tension afterwards, circle their heads in all directions to release tension from the neck, etc.

[j_menz]

I ask myself: How can that not affect the fluent execution of a scale on the piano?

One suspects that that is not a consideration for many of them.

That said, the issue of damage from non-piano activities is a real one, and probably one that is much increased in recent times. All the technique correction at the piano in the world will be useless if the fundamental problem is elsewhere, and one should look for all possible causes of difficulty. It also means that "periods of rest" are only such if they actually rest the mechanisms being worked at the piano.

[dima_76557]

About over-practising. I found a story on a site dedicated to AB Michelangeli and would like to quote a part of it that litterally shocked me, coming from someone who is often taken as the perfect example of what good technique is:

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli had an artisan's concept of his job of pianist. To play, he used to say, means labour. It means to feel a great ache in the arms and in the shoulders. [?!?] He practiced up to eight, ten hours per day, in quest for an equilibrium between the long for the sound effects that the instrument cannot yield and the sensitiveness that allows one to steal the maximum from it nonetheless, as he used to say to his disciples. He used to work on a piece until it was technically perfect, then he began to think about its interpretation. He stopped practicing just a couple of days before the last rehearsal, not to go on the stage with his hands and his mind tainted by the mechanics of exercise. As the years passed by, his extreme sensibility of touch transformed into an absolute equilibrium of the pianistic colours. Together with few other exceptional pianists, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli stretched the pianistic technique to extreme limits, and it is unconceivable that one could do more both in precision, elegance, and powerfulness.

https://web.infinito.it/utenti/g/giuseppe.angilella/abm/life.html