music related injuries

wilderness
Mon, 18 Jun 2007 11:23:11 +0000

My S, too, had to give up his summer program and severly curtail year-end practicing/concerts (senior year!!)due to diagnosis of tendonitis. Fortunately, it was diagnosed early and we found a neurologist and PT team that specialize in working with professional musicians. (Boston has such resources, fortunately).

The assessment/diagnosis by this team required that he bring his instrument so that they could evaluate his technique, posture, breathing etc. to determine possible contributing factors. They also asked about computer use, keyboard/mouse placement, chair/desk height hours etc. They recommended changes in the computer/keyboard/chair/desk positioning, and initially severely curtailed his practicing to two ten minute session with a minimum hour break in between. They found no technical, posture, breathing problems and concluded that the tendonitis resulted from overuse and a practice schedule that did not include the following elements also articulated by Bassdad: warm up and cool down prior to and following practices; practice time broken down into 25 min segments divided by 5 minute breaks; strengthening excersises targeting specific muscle groups surrounding key tendon areas often impacted by his instrument.

These were recommendations for a lifetime of future injury-free playing once his tendonitis healed, not just during the period following recuperation. We hear stories from many of his music performance friends that by the end of the year, many string players (at Peabody, Julliard, Manhattan, NEC, etc,) have to stop or highly curtail practicing playing following the run up of practicing in late winter early spring for recitial, juries, etc). We’re hoping that S’ newly designed practice regimen will prevent futher injury and the enormous frustration for him that accompanies the restrictions on his playing time, especially as he heads off to as double degree performance student (both classical and jazz studies) next fall.