Hi pianiststrongbad,
Thanks for your input. For me, many many hours a day of practice aids my development. This is because I'm still relatively a beginner in comparison to my other colleagues here (I haven't been playing long). I'll definitely be taking a break for a bit. Thanks again!
Best,
AJ
If you must regularly practice more than 4 hours per day, then I have a few recommendations:
- Take a 5 minute break every hour. This is the same advice a doctor makes to someone who works in an office every day. Sitting in a chair for extended periods is not healthy for the body.
- Make sure you do not feel any tension in your hands or arms. Tension is the enemy of piano playing and leads to injury.
- Try to build a practice schedule and document what you practice. For example, indicate how much time you spent trying to get a particular passage up to tempo. Write down how much time you spend trying to memorize a particular passage.
- Don't practice physically taxing passages (glissandi, or extended octave passages) for longer than 20 minutes at a time.
Several years ago I would occasionally practice more than 4 hours per day - I found that beyond that time there was diminishing returns. Sure I could still sit at the piano comfortably and play through pieces, but at that point I was merely playing pieces and not really "practicing" anything as my concentration had diminished greatly from the time I had started that day.
I learned that it was far more beneficial for me to have a plan when I got to the practice room and divide my time across a few pieces or passages than to rehearse all of my pieces extensively every day.
I wish you a speedy recovery.