Regular Warm Up
Posted: 13 May 2018 09:29
Regular Warm Up
We all realise that athletes and sports people will always warm up before commencing their activity. We need to recognize that as organ/keyboard playing can be quite physical, we need to consider doing the same. Therefore we need to warm up as well before we spend a long spell playing.
It won’t come as a surprise that our fingers are one area that we fail to exercise properly. If you are like me, with one replacement knee joint, (which is brilliant by the way) you have to maintain an exercise regime or you will get stiff.
In the following posts I’ll explore some ideas to help us in this area.
Having made the observation that athletes and sports people always warm up, especially before strenuous exercise, and recognising that our fingers are a major area that we fail to pay attention to, let’s investigate how we can make things easier for ourselves.
Our hands obviously play a very key (excuse the pun) part in our organ/keyboard skills. Unevenness and inaccuracies in our playing mainly occur because of weakness in our fingers and the relationship between them. The smaller or less significant digits seem to cause us more trouble than our thumbs, index and middle fingers. On closer consideration we soon realise that the alternation of fingers 3 & 5, or the alternation of fingers 2 & 4 causes us most trouble.
So with that in mind, with our hands, we need to maintain the side to side stretch, and also to build strength, co-ordination and independence into our fingers. I appreciate that this is very important for pianists, for obvious reasons, but some pieces we play on our keyboards do require extra effort.
Warning – Before commencing any exercise, you may wish to discuss the matter with your Doctor – that is a clause that I have added to indicate that you tackle these at your own risk!!!! Like frequent signs in car parks about the risk of leaving your car in one of their parking spaces, TDP can take no responsibility for any accidents.
But to be serious, you may well say, "I've been playing for decades and I've never sustained an injury or even caused someone else to suffer one", but you can overdo even simple exercises and injure yourself, so you have been warned! You cannot be too careful. Proceed with caution.
To start with, if freedom of movement is our aim, then good posture is essential.
So sit at your organ/keyboard ... tall, but not stiff. You know what I mean. Never slouch. Let your shoulders relax and down, while retaining a sense of buoyancy.
A slow gentle rocking back, forth and sideways from your hips will help you keep your arm joints mobile.
Your seating position and posture actually affects the way your arm weight operates. For instance, if you sit too close to the keyboard in order to focus on the music (because of failing eyesight, for example), your arms will push your hands forward, effectively jamming your wrists and forcing your fingers to play from an awkward angle. So moving back a little, keeping your back straight will cause your arms to pull your hands gently back and restore a healthy playing position.
Think of your elbows as wanting to bend and pull backwards, and your wrists as being drawn downwards, with your fingers as pulling at the keys.
Regularly and consciously think about your posture when playing.
Peter
We all realise that athletes and sports people will always warm up before commencing their activity. We need to recognize that as organ/keyboard playing can be quite physical, we need to consider doing the same. Therefore we need to warm up as well before we spend a long spell playing.
It won’t come as a surprise that our fingers are one area that we fail to exercise properly. If you are like me, with one replacement knee joint, (which is brilliant by the way) you have to maintain an exercise regime or you will get stiff.
In the following posts I’ll explore some ideas to help us in this area.
Having made the observation that athletes and sports people always warm up, especially before strenuous exercise, and recognising that our fingers are a major area that we fail to pay attention to, let’s investigate how we can make things easier for ourselves.
Our hands obviously play a very key (excuse the pun) part in our organ/keyboard skills. Unevenness and inaccuracies in our playing mainly occur because of weakness in our fingers and the relationship between them. The smaller or less significant digits seem to cause us more trouble than our thumbs, index and middle fingers. On closer consideration we soon realise that the alternation of fingers 3 & 5, or the alternation of fingers 2 & 4 causes us most trouble.
So with that in mind, with our hands, we need to maintain the side to side stretch, and also to build strength, co-ordination and independence into our fingers. I appreciate that this is very important for pianists, for obvious reasons, but some pieces we play on our keyboards do require extra effort.
Warning – Before commencing any exercise, you may wish to discuss the matter with your Doctor – that is a clause that I have added to indicate that you tackle these at your own risk!!!! Like frequent signs in car parks about the risk of leaving your car in one of their parking spaces, TDP can take no responsibility for any accidents.
But to be serious, you may well say, "I've been playing for decades and I've never sustained an injury or even caused someone else to suffer one", but you can overdo even simple exercises and injure yourself, so you have been warned! You cannot be too careful. Proceed with caution.
To start with, if freedom of movement is our aim, then good posture is essential.
So sit at your organ/keyboard ... tall, but not stiff. You know what I mean. Never slouch. Let your shoulders relax and down, while retaining a sense of buoyancy.
A slow gentle rocking back, forth and sideways from your hips will help you keep your arm joints mobile.
Your seating position and posture actually affects the way your arm weight operates. For instance, if you sit too close to the keyboard in order to focus on the music (because of failing eyesight, for example), your arms will push your hands forward, effectively jamming your wrists and forcing your fingers to play from an awkward angle. So moving back a little, keeping your back straight will cause your arms to pull your hands gently back and restore a healthy playing position.
Think of your elbows as wanting to bend and pull backwards, and your wrists as being drawn downwards, with your fingers as pulling at the keys.
Regularly and consciously think about your posture when playing.
Peter