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We forgot!!

Look up an A.R.T (active release therapist) guy in your area. 90% of the time, they'll get you playing, pain-free.

8 years ago I was training my fiancee for pro wrestling. She was West Indian (Trinidadian) and already in very athletic shape, though lacking in power and strength.

She started out at 112 pounds (5'3") and we wanted to add about 20 pounds of functional muscle. Along the way, she developed tendonitis in her wrists which affected her ability to even hold a toothbrush!

I suggested a chiropractor/ART practicioner and she refused, fearing that chiropractors only worked on bones (most do). I told her that ART was different, an intense message while moving the body parts through a plane of motion specific to releasing the triggers.

She decided to see a sports physician/orthopedist instead. For three months they messaged her hands, dipped them in warm wax, and recited mumbo jumbo over them. Finally, the doc said, "this isn't working. I'd like to try cortisone shots to relieve the inflammation of the nerve sheaths".

That's all she had to hear because she feared needles even more than chiropractors, and I made the appointment for her with MY ART guy, the guy that helped me with many power-lifting and martial arts injuries over the years. He does all of the elite powerlifters and bodybuilders on Long Island and was Dorian Yates' (Mr. Olympia) ART guy during Dorian's Mr. Olympia reign.

He examined her and told me he'd have her good as new, that he could "knock it out in about 6 visits". Within 2 visits she was using her hands normally, and back in the gym within 5!

I have never heard of ART and bear in mind we are in the UK here (we live in the dark ages still). But I will look it up. Thanks. Adrian

Dorian Yates (former 6 time Mr. Olympia):

http://www.footbag.org/~footbag/media/686/Dorian%20Yates.jpg

was made a huge believer in ART, especially Dr. Durlan Castro from Long Island, one of the finest ART practicioners in the world, to keep his mounting injuries, due to extreme heavy duty weight training, under control.

I myself once incurred a torn outer bicep while doing strict 140 pound incline dumbell flyes. I tested the extent of the injury in the gym and I couldn't even lower an empty olympic bar (45 pounds) from the bench saddles to my chest without enormous pain.

I went to see Dr. Castro the next day who worked on it by ("cleaning it out", as he said, to prevent scarring in the muscle an promote circulation and healing).

He worked on the bicep for two weeks, every other day and after two weeks I was benching 225 for reps (about 50% of normal workout load).

Two weeks later, I was pushing at full power and pulling at about 50 to 60%. Four weeks from the injury, I was pushing and pulling at full capacity without a limited range of motion, although the bicep itself migrated slightly down from it's orignal position (which is to be expected with a tear the likes of which I sustained).

Without the ART, I'm sure it would have been 6 weeks before I could even go into the gym again and use my upper body!

Ok, well luckily I don't need to bench 450 pounds, I just need to press down about one and a half ounces quite often, without it causing me a problem :-) A

Danny, this is just confused. The only muscle in your fingers,as I said in the other topic are the interoseous and lumbricals. And you do NO damage using these. Otherise, again from the other topic Mozart, Bach and Hummel are all recorded as only using fingers.
Rubbish again. Of course you get stronger the more you practice. You need that strength or you never reach the 'tightness' of rhythm needed to interpret most 18th century and a good deal of 19th century music.
Pressing 10 X 1.6 ounces many times a second is no inconsiderable task. The underweight, skinny, small comments are just plain bizarre.
You'll have to show me evidence of this. As far as I'm aware the speed neurological signals travel at is fixed.

Daniel, you have a lot to learn. I suggest you start with Otto Ortmann and Arnold Schultz.

You'd be surprised at how much your playing would improve by increasing your overall body strength and cardio system which would improve your stamina and ability to target ballistically.

Technique is all about effective, accurate targeting, and the ability to do so ballistically utilizing a wide dynamic range whether using limited motion for extreme velocity at the mere surface of the keys or depressing the keys throughout their escapement range.

Circuit resistance training twice every 8 days and some form of aerobic exercise, interspersed adjunctly with circuit training, twice every 8 days, walking or jogging with weights, steppers, versa-climbers, stationary bikes, arm bikes (called UBEs), etc. are very well suited for pianists.

Just avoid the exercises that directly work the forearm muscles, like wrist rollers, wrist curls, and reversed curls with supra-pronation of the wrists. These can considerably tighten up your forearms thus impeding fine finger motion.

The forearms will naturally strengthen without undue tightening from upper body exercises that directly target the pecs (like bench presses, flyes, dips, and pull overs), back (like pull downs/pull ups, rows, and deadlifts), deltoids (like shoulder presses and front/rear/side dumbell raises), triceps (like skull crushers, french presses, close grip bench presses, and cable pushdowns, and biceps (like all forms of curls).

The hands must grip the bar and the forearms stabilize the weight so your forearms will get plenty of indirect work from exercising the muscles of the upper body.

Strong and fast away from the piano = strong and fast at the piano!

Well, as it happens, I am not a couch potato! I do go to the gym a bit, and I swim, but my main exercise is cycling. I do two laps of a 10 mile circuit near my house, twice a week. Not perfect, and not much upper body focus. I will have a think about that.

Cycling and swimming are excellent aerobic exercises! Unfortunately, from what I've seen, most pianists are couch potatos.

For those interested in the speed of neurological signaling.

Disciple, your so right about the fitness side. It's not for me though.

I don't know if this at all helpful, but I fell up the stairs and bent back a finger on my right hand in March of last year. Despite the doctors saying there was no obvious injury, it was still very uncomfortable for a number of months - particularly if I played for an extended period. The pain finally eased in maybe October (I was rubbing my hand to ease the ache and I felt it release). I think I'd momentarily dislocated the finger when I fell originally and that had trapped a tiny nerve or something. So, I wouldn't rule out an old injury. Maybe it would be worth seeing a physiotherapist who would be able to manipulate the hand and fingers and they might able to feel any joint issues. You might not recall a specific injury, but nevertheless it could be injury rather than technique / strain related.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one keyboardklutz. From my experience playing the piano is nothing but neuromuscular control and it had nothing to do with "hand strength" or muscular fitness. This approach has served me well and the hundreds of injuried pianists who have reversed their damage and learned to play beautifully without strain. There's no evidence of any kind in the published articles on piano related injuries that making your hands and hands muscles "stronger" prevents injuries in any way.
By the way Ortmann was the one who claimed that a 3 year old has all the muscular and mechanical abilities to play virtuoso powerful fast passages and that the difference between the 3 year old and the virtuoso piano player has nothing to do with finger or hand strenght but the neurological ability to tell the fingers what to do before they do it: the advance neurological response learned through practice and playing experience.

When I say that speed is nothing but a faster signaling I don't mean a passive signaling (i.e. the intrinsic speed of a signal) but I'm talking of the conscious ability to signal your muscles to either contract or release. This is all mental work and and being able to contract and release as quickly as possible is mental training. That is: the ability to contract and release as quickly as possible while you're playing and focusing on sound and sight too.

Again I respect your knowledge and I'm glad it is working for you but I opt for a different approach. In my experience there's no kind of difference between the playing of strong hands and the playing of weak hands. And of course strong hands gets injuried as often as weak hands becase the strenght of the hand of the fitness of the hand muscles has nothing to do with the common piano injuries that plagues such a huge percentage of players at all levels.

My feelings on Ortmann:

Ortmann's statements on "finger strength" are basically flawed. Finger strength doesn't emanate from the fingers. It's derived from the hand, which derives it's power from the muscles and tendons of the forearm through the wrist as a conduit. The faster you wish to play, over prolonged periods, the more you must relax the muscles and eliminate all tension. Strength and speed = power, the ability to initiate power like a sharp checkmark, turning it on instantly. Power is only feasible in bursts, our fast and slow twitch muscle combinations make it that way. If you wish to play fast for prolonged periods, as one must do while playing virtuoso pieces with long technical passages, relaxation of the playing mechanism is essential, unless tendonitis and carpal syndrome is your goal rather than performing the notes fluidly. Tampering with unnatural finger positions to exert more power than is needed to execute will give you these maladies. You can play hard (with strength) or you can play fast (with relaxation). You can't do both simultaneously (for long anyway)

As far as being conducive to technical velocity, Ortmann's "flat finger" suggestions are right up there with Schumann's ring-finger work-out sling. Anything that "strenghtens" the fingers will develop the muscles of the forearms, increasing their density, thereby reducing the fast twitch fibres ratio to the amount of slow twitch fibres which are built through strength training. A total relaxation, harnessing extremely fast movement at the surface of the keys, and training the mind to link with the keys, letting go and forgetting what is "impossible", is the key to unprecedented velocity. More than enough technique than you will need. I always believed that it's better to play well within the upper limits of your technical ability than to ever approach the absolute top end. Harnessing this type of fast reflex, fast impulse movement, which almost everyone is capable of, will allow you to play faster than you thought possible when called for, with comfort and total ease.

Danny your going to have to give me a page reference on Ortmann. Here is the Ortmann I know:
pg 302, The Physiological Mechanics of Piano Technique (1929).

Disciple - Ortmann never advocated flat fingers. Not sure where you got all that from - nothing you say bears any relation to his work or writing.

But doesn't this kind of contradict what you said earlier. I understand that physical fitness, sport and health are of benefit to piano playing because they all train reflexes (which is what piano playing is all about) but why muscle hypertrophy from weight training that target the pecs or shoulder or the core should help a pianist if we agree that muscular strength has little to do with piano playing and if we agree that once one understands that conscious fast contraction and releases and fast reflexes is what it takes to play the piano the concept of "stamina" loses all its importance? I mean people talk about stamina required to play the piano because when you accumulate tension as you play, playing become tiring and you need to build resistance to go on.

But once we learn to apply proper contract and release and never accumulate tension while training our reflexes we find out that even playing for 5 hours the most demanding repertoire is not only not tiring but it's even refreshing.
All the pianist who have followed the Taubman approach have said the same to me: the more they play the better and refreshed they feel and they never feel tired from playing even hours and hours without any rest cause they have trained the muscle to contract and release through the piece i.e. they have trained they muscle to apply a non-static muscular activity hence the muscles refresh themselves as the pianists plays.

So your a Taubman disciple. You should have said before! I'd still like the Ortmann reference if you please.

I studied with a Taubman teacher for 4 years.
I found the method advocates too much excess movement to get great results. Too much wrist rotation, arm movement.... stuff like that.
In order to play with great ease and efficiency, one must be very close to the key, and use as little extraneous movement as possible.

We've certainly been here before Mr K! To re-hash a little - I was taught to use arm weight all over the place in Mozart and Bach. Totally unsuitable. For Chopin though - totally indispensable!

I read an article posted on the Pianostreet forums about a year ago in the midst of a technical discussion similar to this one. I'll have to see if I can find it.

Because a general increase in fitness, both aerobic (cardio) and anaerobic (strength) will improve the overall condition and coordination of physical and mental performance.

Because you're strong and fit, with increased stamina doesn't mean that you have to perform at your peak level at all times. It's always better to have more headroom on your performance capabilities than you will be called upon to use under all but rare circumstance.

This is true. Excess motion will kill your velocity. Subtle movements, rotations of the elbow and wrist as well as lateral articulation of the wrist, as little as is necessary to have the desired affect of putting the plane of the hand at the most advantageous position will assist facility ergo potential velocity.

I favor motion of the fingers articulate from the hinge of the knuckle. This affords the ultimate in relaxed articulation and will completely eliminate tightness in the hand.

You can approximate this position by forming a triangle with your hand, the knuckles being the top of the pyramid, the thumb tip meeting the tips of the other fingers, initiating motion from the high point of the pyramid (the raised knuckles). This type of hand position (of course slightly flattened out) will dramatically increase velocity of soft playing at the surface of the keys as only a twitch of the knuckle will produce sound.

It's more a "tickling" of the keys than depressing them. This is the key to unlocking tremendous technical ability beyond what you thought you were capable of. Mind you, by mastering this type of hand posture using only minimal, subtle finger pressure barely more than the weight of the finger itself, the time lag of LIFTING the finger is almost completely removed. With such a light, fast-twitch, reflexive touch, the rebound of the key itself is sufficient to lift your fingertip back up to starting position reducing almost all excess motion contradictory to downward activation of the key.

This is why the motion of my fingers looks extremely negligible. Now even though downward G force on the keys have been greatly reduced with this "flyweight" tickling type of technique, strength and all ballistics mechanization STILL play a huge part in the overall mechanism's ability to bring the hand and angle it exactly where and when needed. The stronger you are, the better your ability to do this AND to change to a non-tickling approach immediately as is necessary.