Dedicated to everyone who has ever asked: "Is there any special gymnastics for the musician?"
Unfortunately, I have not yet seen a special manual or any other work "Gymnastics for the musician", but who knows, perhaps someone once wrote such a book — we just do not know about it (it lies somewhere in the libraries of our vast country) or it has been lost.
However, I encountered one exercise for musicians’ hands in a string class, and then one of my first teachers (a conductor by profession) showed it to me. Raise your hands up with palms turned outwards and stretch. Relax first the fingers, then the hands, then the forearm, then the shoulder, and then let the arms drop. I think this exercise will be useful for musicians of all specialties.
The main question is where the inner physical energy comes from and how to direct it correctly. And most importantly — to feel every millimeter of your beloved instrument so subtly and impeccably.
The parts of the body that constantly touch the instrument are the hands. Much depends on how we feel our hands. However, doing exercises only for the hands does not make much sense, since they do not exist separately from the body. Here we can recall the well‑known phrase: "Where do your hands grow from?" But we will answer this question in more detail than it is usually answered.
When raising the arms, not only the muscles of the arms work, but also the back. Therefore I can confidently assert that the back is literally "our everything". Spinal curvature is quite common nowadays, and musicians are no exception, since a person holding an instrument assumes a posture far from natural for the body. Hours of practice make the muscles memorize the load on certain muscles and in some cases overload them, as a result of which they become tense. Therefore one of the questions that not only a musician but any person should pose is the prevention of spinal curvature.
In my observation it is quite difficult to hold the back muscles if your abdominal muscles (stomach) are relaxed. I have thought about this since childhood — in what position should the stomach be? It seems to me that this is rarely discussed; one of the subjects where this should be repeated endlessly from early childhood is physical education, but we all know our "PE teachers" and in my opinion those "PE" classes bring very little benefit. Doctors I know have assured me that the abdominal muscles do not affect the back muscles in any way. But it seems to me that the body is arranged so uniquely and ingeniously that it can work only as a whole, not in parts.
As a result, in addition to musical abilities, the outcome should be a physically harmoniously formed person, so that there are no clamps and a person can play the instrument with pleasure and with ease.
In the next article you will learn which specific physical exercises and yoga poses I recommend to everyone who studies music.
