Ulnar deviation

[botticelli]

Hello. Got some pain recently in my wrists from what I believe to be ulnar deviation, as I haven't been thinking much about it. I play mostly jazz piano, which involves lots of chords in the middle register placed right in front on me.

Ive been focusing on having my wrist straight.  But my question is, should my wrists be straight to the piano at 90 degree when playing in front of me? Or should I have the hands/wrists turned slightly inwards when playing? A picture says more than a thousand word, so I found this link. It's the question 1 B photo im talking about. Can I actually play like that?

https://darrylspiano.com/2016/11/20/healthy-hand-quiz/

[keypeg]

Related (thots), so perhaps useful.

First , the writer is spot on saying that the fingers don't have to be parallel to the keyboard, because initially I was "lining up" my hand as if fingers were cutlery in a slotted drawer.  Your hand can adopt all kinds of angles vis-a-vis the keyboard.  I felt like an idiot when this was pointed out to me because it seems so obvious.

Another thing is distance to the piano.  If you are too close you'll have to angle your elbows out to make room for your forearms and you'll get that kink at the wrist.  Experiment with distance and what that does.

You also have instances where for example your LH will be way over in the low registers, the RH way over in the high registers - you'll be leaning forward a bit, and your arms will be angled.  Or what if both hands are high up in the treble clef, and you're sweeping along toward to middle, say in an arpeggio.  In other words, you're playing an instrument that is bigger and definitely wider than you are, so you're "reaching over" to different spots.

When I played originally as a child, the only book(s) I had kept to the area of middle C and I never developed that spatial awareness.  Your hands at the wrists are attached to the rest of you.  That too had not been in my awareness.

[lelle]

This is just my opinion, and it's hard to write about this stuff and not be misunderstood, but it's not so much the ulnar deviation that is dangerous, but it's more a question of if the wrist is held in that deviated angle stiffly, and how much your wrist is angled. Your wrist will be angled differently depending on what register you play, but if it's allowed to do so naturally, gently and most importantly with constant suppleness in the wrist muscles I don't think it's a problem. Dogmatically holding your wrist straight at all times because someebody told you to is more likely to make you tense IMO. Your mileage may vary.

[ego0720]

Related (thots), so perhaps useful.

When I played originally as a child, the only book(s) I had kept to the area of middle C and I never developed that spatial awareness.  Your hands at the wrists are attached to the rest of you.  That too had not been in my awareness.

Me too. And what’s sad was this was realized even in Czerny days when he defined the parameters for proper seating and movements in his notes to his students. The spine is like a tilting flower that sways left and right when necessary, elbow 1 inch above keys + 1 inch forward that of shoulders (when seated), fingers 1 inch from key edge and not deeper.

I’ll opine that one should discover the *default natural hand position* from which the degree of deviation correlates to problem severity. Always come home to the default center point of hand position where wrist is allowed equal freedom to any direction. Not a strict rule per se but a general guide in practice.

Wrist is more flexible up and down than it is left to right with its 8 bones. Keep that in mind when experimenting with flow. Sideway motion tends to put stress on the body configuration, or forearms rather.

[skari123]

Hello. Got some pain recently in my wrists from what I believe to be ulnar deviation, as I haven't been thinking much about it. I play mostly jazz piano, which involves lots of chords in the middle register placed right in front on me.

Ive been focusing on having my wrist straight.  But my question is, should my wrists be straight to the piano at 90 degree when playing in front of me? Or should I have the hands/wrists turned slightly inwards when playing? A picture says more than a thousand word, so I found this link. It's the question 1 B photo im talking about. Can I actually play like that?

https://darrylspiano.com/2016/11/20/healthy-hand-quiz/

To answer your question quickly, yes you can play like that. The problem with ulnar deviation is that it cuts off your fingers from the rest of the arm, so you are left with only the fingers moving when playing, which is not a good thing and is probably one of the reasons you get pain while playing. When the wrist is somewhat "straight" you can release weight from the whole arm which is more effortless than many seem to think. Please note that the wrist should be flexible, there are many micro-movements in the wrist that help with a lot of things when playing. But I believe that the wrist movements are not initiated with the wrist, but rather with the elbow/shoulder part of the arm. There are two types of coordination at work in piano playing, the first being the obvious, coordination of the arms together. The second type is coordination of different muscle groups together. The reason why people play with tension is because the muscles are not coordinated together. This is the reason why many seem to have good technique but suffer from pain when playing. Hope this helps