No pain, no gain?

[Bob]

How true is this?


If you push it enough that it hurts, you have still pushed it.  Once you recover, you will have nudged that edge out a little.  That further edge is good.  The pain and recovery time is bad.

[ted]

If you mean physical gain and physical pain then I cannot see any sense in that. If you mean taking pains in the sense of directed effort (which may in itself be quite enjoyable)  in order to express oneself better at the instrument then the answer is yes.

[Bob]

I mean physical pain.  Pushing yourself to and beyond that point that it hurts.

[Tash]

well i had a short conversation with my teacher about that the other week when i told her my pinky was hurting when playing the 4th movement from beethoven's op.27 no1 too much. and she just told me to make sure i didn't get into any of the RSI business, but we need a bit of pain in order to improve. or something like that...i agree, like if i stopped every time a muscle ached a bit then iwouldn't get anywhere. but only to a degree, if i know the pain is just a matter of me needing to gain some more strength, but if it's more of a putting toomuch stress on a point, then i won't overwork it.

[ted]

I see. No, speaking for myself, any piano playing which involves physical pain is absolutely and unconditionally out of the question.

[vera]

Tired muscles .......fine.
Pain..........no, not good at all, do not push it, find the cause.

[Daevren]

There is no physical gain.

If there is pain, stop playing!

You may be damaging your hands.

[LVB op.57]

Feeling tired is normal, and very different from being in pain.
Being in pain means you're either overworking or not working in the proper way. So no, no pain, no gain does not apply to piano playing. Eventually, too much pain will mean no playing.

[happyface94]

No. Stop before you push it too far. I've had a tendon inflammation for repeating the same passage countless number of times out of frustration. Muscle tireness is normal on technical challenging pieces, as well as sometimes stretching, but as soon as it hurts, you should take a break and start back later.

Oh, and I also got my nail skin break, which bled out, and I can tell you it is much harder to play after, my exam was only a week after and I prayed to be healed before.

[Barbosa-piano]

 I do that all the time, maybe because I like going through technical difficulties, and I never care for the pain until later... I believe I create more confidence after that...

[thalbergmad]

I do that all the time, maybe because I like going through technical difficulties, and I never care for the pain until later... I believe I create more confidence after that...

We seem to be in the minority here but i do the same.

[bernhard]

“No pain, no gain.”

Hmmmm…

What about this alternative philosophy:

“No pain, no pain”.

 

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[lostinidlewonder]

One of my teachers asked me to do all 24 etudes from Chopin in 2 weeks. Memorise that is, not play it at concert level. That required around 9 hours a day. The pain after the first day was immense, but the amount of music absorbed great. But I don't really like associating physical pain to music, something which to me inspires only positive emotion.

In the second week, 9 hours was still brutal but did become a little more routine. But to me I think if you push too hard you can end up hating what you are doing. With extreme time pressure, any technical problems you face will irritate you 100 times more than if you had all the time in the world. You can become utterly anxious over sections of music while you try to sleep that you have to jump up and convince yourself that you can do it just so you can get some rest.

So the emotional rollercoaster you go on when you push yourself to the limits can be very tough to manage for people and can turn people off from music easily. I certainly can't maintain 9 hours at the piano a day, even though piano to me sometimes seems like everything, life is just a lot more than just music.

But still i think that if we want to ever gain anything there has to be some form of effort/struggle, that is the same for anything in this world isnt it? Nothing is free! Memorising/playing music is never a walk in the park, we have to always be intelligent in our approach at first. That comes more natural with experience but it is always a challenge at the start. I think if you don't make a commitment to work on problems you face in your music you just won't ever get better.

[cadenz]

i think physical pain (or even fatigue) in piano playing is completely unacceptable. PIANO IS NOT SPORT. its not about building muscles, its about making music artisically.

[Barbosa-piano]

 Although I believe Cadenz is correct, I like (some times) pretending piano is a sport. Practicing Rachmaninoff's Preludes makes my arms feel stronger, specially the Op23 No. 5. The athletic movement in most of Liszt's music, which involves arms , shoulders and back, remark me the athletic side of piano.

[pianonut]

tending to be a bit lazier than most of you, i look to the report my son did tonight on mike tyson's comeback (june 11th in washington, dc) and what his new coach says ("when you are older you have to pace yourself and save energy").  when i sit at the piano now, i try to be more friendly toward the piano.  i don't wish to pound it.  maybe even talk to it a little bit.  ok. nutty.

[happyface94]

9 hours a day, whoo hoo... After 14 years and at conservatory level, I still play 1 hour. Yeah my teacher doesnt like me for that .

[thalbergmad]

I am not sure who said it but i have read the following somewhere.

"After a concert there is blood on the keyboard, and so there should be"

[Derek]

I sometimes play octaves and so forth to the point of a bit of soreness. Then I stop. The next day, I can play longer and faster. I build up that way.  My forearm muscles often have that "I just exercised a lot" soreness in them---which I actually find pleasant, its like how my muscles feel in other parts of my body after I work out.

I also practice boogie in that manner. Sometimes my left hand has gotten pretty sore from that, but I never get tendonitis or carpel tunnel. And now I can play a solid boogie left hand indefinitely.

[lagin]

Sometimes if I don't stop for a break, or if I'm too tense, my right forearm gets this kind of numbish feeling.  I've had tendonitis before (not from piano) and the feeling is very similar to that.  Not pain, but an ackward tight numbness.  If I don't stop then numbness will only get worse and sometimes not go away for some days.  Naturally I have to quit playing completely when this happens.  What is this?

[gee]

hey, what won't kill you will only make you stronger. That may not be true in some cases like weightlifting or extreme sports, but this is piano we're talking about. A lil pain should be worth the gain.  Anyways if there is any damage to your hand, it should heal relatively quick being such a small body part.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying pain is good, but if you practise the right way, and effectively, the pain is well worth your troubles.