Piano Video Lesson: How to Avoid Injury in Piano Playing: Is Pain OK?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I'm Robert Estrin. What a crazy title for a video, Is Pain Ok in Piano Playing? Well, you know they say, "No pain, no gain," but I'm going to come right out and say it, no, pain is not okay in piano playing. So what is this video about then? Well, there are some exceptions, but I want to make very clear that pain is always a warning sign that something is wrong. I'm going to bring up the exceptions, but first I want to show you ways you can mitigate pain in case you're having pain in your piano playing. Of course if you're having any kind of serious issues, particularly anything recurring, you should see a doctor to find out what the heck is going on, because pain is not good. So how can you avoid pain in your playing?

Well, it's so important, incredibly, vitally important how you sit at the piano. Take that time to make sure that you're sitting the appropriate distance from the keyboard and come up with a seat that you can adjust the height to exactly the right height, an adjustable artist bench or sitting on something, books or pillows, or something, because being at the right height is really critical. Now for most people... Now I always have to qualify things because for every general rule there are exceptions, but generally speaking, having your hands straight... You see how my arms are parallel to the floor? This is very comfortable because your wrists are straight. Now, just like if you were typing like this all day long, you might develop carpal tunnel. Or even worse yet, like this. You don't want your wrists to be bent. Well, imagine if you're sitting at the piano and you're so low that your wrists are like this the whole time you're practicing; that stresses the nerves and the tendons and everything becomes, it can become swollen and sore just from being in that position. So take that time to sit at the right height.

Now, what about the distance? I've talked about that. Sometimes you see people and they're always like this, and this is not very comfortable, particularly the angle you have to go to play high notes and low notes when you're sitting too close is extraordinarily tension-inducing. You want to be far enough away that there's an angle to your arms, that they're not right at your sides. The other thing is, you don't want the bench to be right up against the back of your knees because you have no flexibility for getting from one end of the keyboard to the other quickly, as you might have to do in a lot of different music, right?

How are you going to do something like that if you can't even move, you're too close? So sitting in the right place and having the right angle of your wrists, all of this is really vitally important. Now, if you feel pain and you wonder why you're having pain, of course there's the possibility that your piano action might need a lubrication. Maybe you're playing on a piano that has 65, 70 grams of down weight and it just takes too much effort to push the keys down. Another problem is if your piano has a really dead sound and you're trying to fill a room that is too large for the instruments or there's ambient sounds of air conditioning or refrigerators or something like that, that you're constantly overcoming, you may be playing way harder than you think, even if your action isn't heavy, and that could really be taxing to your hands. So that's another thing to be aware of.

Now, I talked in the beginning about the exceptions, about no pain, no gain. Is there any truth to that? Well, there is a little bit. Now, any of you who exercise, you know that if you're doing weightlifting or running, the lactic acid naturally builds up in your muscles and you'll feel a soreness that can be described as pain, but it's a pain that goes away as soon as you stop, because it's a normal part of the growth of muscles. In fact, the only way muscles really grow is by tearing down some muscles and then they rebuild. This is the physiology of exercise. How you build muscle with weightlifting, it's actually destroying some, so your body recovers and you give it time to rest so that the new muscle can grow. Well, a little bit of that happens in piano playing.

If you've ever done wrist exercises or even scales, you'll get done and you'll feel tired, you'll feel fatigued, and you'll feel a certain soreness at least temporarily in your fingers. Now, if that persists after just a few minutes of rest, then there's something wrong. But to feel a little bit of fatigue bordering on pain in your hands after a workout on the piano, as long as it's akin to what you feel when you're exercising, that is a normal part of growing strength of exercise, whether it's weightlifting or playing the piano. Knowing that line and make sure you don't cross that line.

Anything that persists after just a few moments, it shouldn't take more than seconds, I wouldn't even say minutes, before your hands feel okay again after a workout. At times I've practiced some really treacherous sections of Liszt, and I will kind of alternate between doing the really virtuosic sections and the more poetic sections. Going back and forth, making sure that I don't put too much strain. And this is what you must do in your practice. If you feel to the point of that pain, or at least major fatigue, that achy feeling you get when your muscles are being worked out, give it a little break and come back to it, and make sure that it's nothing that persists.

So is pain okay in piano playing? Generally no, but when you're doing a major workout, you may feel a sense of relief when you stop for a little bit. So give yourself rest, walk around. I like to do stretching throughout the day. It's really helpful. Because your neck, your shoulders, particularly if you're reading music or you're looking down all the time, all of this has to function properly because your nerves are a system that go all the way to your brain. And at any point the nerves become infringed upon, it can cause problems in your hands, even in your neck or your back. So you must be limber. Doing yoga is terrific, other stretching, I recommend it really highly. And I don't know what I would do if I [inaudible 00:06:54] my stretching all the time. I make a video about the stretching that I do because it's stuff that I've come up with that's based upon yoga, but it's my own personal stuff that I can do anywhere. And you might enjoy that as well. Let me know in the comments.

Again, I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource. Thanks so much for joining me, and all you subscribers, and ringing the bell and sharing this video means the world to me because it's how we can spread this message to everyone who loves the piano. We'll see you next time.

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