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Healthy Performance

April 2010

Musical Performers & Exercise

As an Alexander Technique teacher, I assume that the average person has the strength to play a musical instrument. As long as a child or adult is active in some way, they will have the necessary strength to play an instrument. Alexander Technique teachers see the problems that most people have on musical instruments, as the result of trying to play perfectly with too much effort and poor technique. When you play an instrument trying too hard, you exhaust yourself, and this feels as if you are too weak to play for long periods. It doesn't matter how strong or conditioned a muscle is, if you work too hard with bad technique, you will exhaust and strain the muscle. I have been a weightlifter most of my life, and I have rarely gotten injured, because I focus on how I lift rather than getting stronger. In other words, I stay with the ends over the means. The means is the technique I lift with that allows me to be balanced, so I don't have to strain to lift, which would cause compression between my bones. If you play an instrument with more work than is necessary and with bad alignment and try to play perfectly, you will strain the musculature of the body and cause compression between the joints.

So, how does one run or lift or swim or do yoga, so that the exercise is an enhancement to one's performance, rather than a detriment? You stay with the means. Which means that as you exercise without joint compression, at the end of the activity, you won't feel as if you can't play your instrument well. So, let's take a general overview of how to run and weightlift and swim and do yoga without sacrificing accuracy on your instrument. This is the critical point about exercise and playing your instrument or singing. I started weightlifting and running around sixteen-years-old, eight years after I began the guitar, and the way I lifted and ran, with so much excess tension and ego, had a negative effect on my playing. I was already sacrificing my body at the instrument with poor use, endless hours of practice and striving for perfection. So, between bad guitar technique and driving myself and poor technique in running and lifting, I ended up with carpal tunnel syndrome in my left wrist. It took an Alexander Technique teacher to save me from myself.

Yoga

All of the postures of yoga need to be done with expansion and flow as you move into them and out of them. There is the movement of attaining the posture, but once in the posture, you want to keep inviting the body with your thoughts to expand in all directions, whether the pose requires a great deal of strength and balance or minimal work.

Here are general principles of expansion in the asanas. Allow the fingers to lead the arms and free shoulders. This means as the wrists, the arms, the shoulder blades and the collarbones follow the arms into movement, there is expanding space in all of the joints, and the shoulder blades are allowed to flow and rotate on the back with every arm movement. Throughout all of the postures, as you move into them, sustain them, and move out of them, elegant flow is created by always inviting your head to lead a free neck and lengthening spine. This is core to the Alexander Technique- that all beautifully organized movement is preceded by the neck releasing and the spine lengthening, and then you move.

The same principles of flow and expansion apply to the legs in the asanas, whether you are standing and weight bearing on the legs or not in a particular asana. You invite the torso to release away from the hip joints, as the knees and ankles are allowed free and expansive movement.

Let's look at the posture of folding over at the hip joints as you stand, drawing the torso to the legs with your arms, as you hold your ankles. This is a release move. As you fold over, send a clear thought to your hamstrings to let go, which allows the pelvis to pivot up and over the upper legs- the humerous bones. It is only the hamstrings which keep anyone from fully folding over and having the torso rest completely against straight legs, (but legs not held rigidly straight). Also, in this pivoted over posture, allow your shoulder blades to be free, as the weight of free shoulders and the weight of a free head on a released neck really lengthen out the spine. In this place find balance over free ankles, so you can be completely free in your torso shoulders and hamstrings.

Running

Nearly every article I've read about running says that running is inherently hard on your body, and the only way to mitigate the damage is to buy very expensive shoes, don't run too much or run barefoot. They come to this conclusion because nearly all runners get into physical trouble. So, is this because running is inherently hard on the body, or because most runners run with poor use? I believe it is because most runners run with poor use.

Core to the Alexander Technique is that the head lead a lengthening spine in all activity. If you watch most people running, they run with hunkered down bodies. They are so intent on getting to the end of their run, that they pull down and lean forward to reach their goal. If you allow the head to lead a lengthening spine upwards, then you will run taller than you walk or stand or sit. This up flow of the head leading a lengthening spine towards the sky, actually decompresses all of the joints of the body, so that you don't hammer the knees as you run. We have a shorthand for describing running (and walking) in the Alexander Technique, “Head up and knees forward”. This means you allow your head to direct the body into upward lengthening as the knees move forward first in running.

Allow your arms to be at your sides as you run, without pulling them in or holding them out. In running the arms and hands will be approximately parallel to the ground. Even though the hands will be supported by the forearms, there is no need to hold the hands up. What this means, is that if someone we're to move your hand as you support it parallel to the ground, the hand would be available for movement. In all of this the whole arm and shoulder girdle, which floats on the ribcage, is in constant movement. A lot of runners hold up their shoulders when they run, and there is movement in their torso and shoulders as they run, but this excess work of holding the shoulders up translates into tension in the whole torso and arms. This has a detrimental effect on the arms and torsos of performers, causing arms and hands to lose sensitivity on their instruments and potentially restricting breathing in singers or wind players. If you run with a free torso and flowing arms, you will not cause technique problems on your instrument.

Weightlifting

What is the intention of lifting weights for the musical performer? They usually believe if they get stronger, they will have more stamina and power to play their instrument or sing, and this can be so. But, on the negative side, lifting weights can really reinforce bad posture and technique on the instrument and get the performer into physical trouble, causing pain in their body as they play or sing. This is what happened to me on the guitar. As I was practicing hours and hours on the guitar hunkered down and lifting more and more weight, the combination caused carpal tunnel syndrome, and I couldn't play without pain. Ultimately an Alexander Technique teacher got me out of trouble. I learned to lift without compressing my joints (and play the guitar without hunkering down).

So, how do you lift without compression of the joints and cause loss of flexibility and not create constant exhaustion in the muscles. If you lift with too much tension and play your instrument with too much tension, you will feel tight and strained in your body all of the time, because you will carry this tension around with you always. Instead of increasing your strength and stamina on the instrument or in singing, you will feel weaker and run out of gas sooner. Simply stated, the more excess tension you carry in your body, the weaker you will feel, not because you are weaker, but because the muscles are tired from overwork 24/7.

Lift with the head leading a dynamically lengthening spine, as you send the weight overhead in a shoulder press, as you arc the weight in a biceps curl, or release your knees in a squat. In other words, when you are weight bearing don't shorten your spine to meet the load. As you press the weight overhead, with the hands leading unfolding arms and free shoulder blades, you really turn up the volume on the head leading a dynamically lengthening spine. This doesn't mean a held spine, but a spine where the musculature is flowing upwards, to keep the weight from shortening the spine and compressing the discs and putting pressure on the nerves flowing into the arms and legs from the spinal cord.

When you do biceps curls, again the head leads a lengthening spine as you arc the weight. Arcing the weight, means that you don't focus on engaging and strengthening the biceps, but on the arc of the hand and bar through space, as you curl the weight. If you focus on strengthening the biceps, you tense the whole arm as you bend the elbow, and you will take away the space in the elbow and cause wear and tear, as you do the curls. Again, the ideal in the Alexander Technique is to do all movement in balance, and allow all of the joints to have space as they are bent and/or rotated.

When you squat or do leg presses, be aware that the thigh muscles lengthen as you bend your knees. Most people perceive the thigh muscles shortening as they squat, because they tighten the thighs in anticipation of the knees bending, so they don't descend too fast. You can actually release the thighs when you squat, and the body will inherently control the descent, so you don't hurt yourself. When you do squats this way, the bones of the knees are not pressed into each other, because you aren't tightening muscles (quadriceps) that need to lengthen for the movement.

Swimming

Swimming has the potential to be the most effortlessly freeing activity of them all for performers, especially the free stroke. The truth is most swimmers muscle this stroke and cause shoulder wear and tear. After the arm/hand pushes the swimmer forward, many swimmers muscle the follow through and return of the arm with tight shoulder blades. Allow the arm to release on the recovery of the stroke, and the hand to lead a free arm and shoulder blade that swings forward, with a minimum of muscle and using mostly momentum. This brings the arm back into position to pull through the water, by mostly resting the arm and freeing it on the recovery.

The flutter kick in swimming is a continuous muscular activity, but you can have the leg bending at the hip knee and ankle with flowing lengthening muscles, rather than shortened muscles. Like the arm's biceps in doing a curl, you can bend at each of the leg joints without tensing and forcing the bones closer together, as you do the flutter kick.

As in all the other exercises I've written about, swim with the head leading a released neck and a lengthening spine. This is especially critical in swimming, because if you swim with a tight neck, as you turn your head side to side to breathe, you will be constantly turning a neck with compressed discs and vertebae. This will really cause wear and tear in the neck, and it will limit shoulder mobility. If you swim with free shoulders and a free neck, you will be freeing up your head neck and shoulders for playing your instrument.

In Conclusion

It has been my intention in this article to present exercise for performing musicians as a form of cross training. What I mean by this is that whether you are playing an oboe or lifting weights, both activities are done with loving organization, so you don't sacrifice your body. This also means that how you play the oboe will affect how you lift. So, if you practice the oboe for hours with poor posture and technique, and then go into the weight room, it is your rigidity at the oboe that may cause you to harm yourself, even if you lift the weights with great Alexandrian posture and technique. If you lift weights with a body that has been held and immobilized for hours at your instrument, you may pull a muscle that has had no flow in it for hours. When playing a musical instrument or singing, even if much of your body appears to be static because of how the instrument is played, this is not what you want. There is no reason for any part of the body of a performer to be held immobile, no matter how little it moves in playing the instrument. The biceps of an oboist supports the lower arms, which hold the instrument, but the oboist can do so without immobilizing the elbows by locking the biceps.

Perform on your instrument and exercise or do yoga, allowing all of these activities to enhance each other, but the ultimate purpose of these activities is to do what you do as an act of self love in a loving manner.