Journal · Practice
The Invisible Athlete
Nothing about practice looks like sport — and your muscles disagree. On food, movement, warming up, and the habits that keep a player’s hands alive for decades.
A musician trains like an athlete, whether he notices or not. The ones who last treat the body as part of the instrument.
Practicing music is deceiving. It doesn’t feel like physical activity: you are sitting or standing in the same place, your heart rate rarely climbs, there is nothing heavy to push or pull. And yet, when we play regularly, we are using repetitive physical movements exactly the way athletes do. There is a harder truth underneath: the muscles that drive hand percussion are mostly small ones — the fine machinery of the fingers, palms, and wrists, working together with tendons that are built for precision, not for endless unprepared repetition. They are more delicate, and more vulnerable to injury, than the big muscles an athlete trains.
That is why musicians get injured so often. We work certain muscles of the body very hard, we sit for many hours — and, unlike athletes, we are rarely disciplined about the care routine that should surround that work. An athlete would never train the way most musicians practice.
So here are a few very important habits that can help you avoid injury and keep a healthy playing routine for many years.
01Diet
Yes — diet. If you are practicing a lot and also eating a lot of highly processed food, sugars, and other inflammatory foods, you are essentially betraying your body: making it work hard and poisoning it at the same time. Choose sides. Are you with your body, or against it?
Playing music asks a great deal of both body and mind — and ultra-processed food quietly works against both: the body doing the work, and the brain, the architect of everything. You are asking for effort with one hand and undermining it with the other.
02Movement
Again — you might not notice it, but it is very likely that you are sitting down for a good few hours when you play. Practice has a way of swallowing time: you sit down for a focused session, and the hours pass without the body once changing its position. That needs to be balanced with movement. Walking, yoga, swimming — whatever works for you. Move your body. It helps clear the inflammation that may be building slowly in the background, and it helps your recovery between sessions. Athletes treat recovery as part of the training itself; for the musician, it should be no different.
03Warm up
One of the most important elements — and one that changed my life personally. Adding a warm-up to your practice routine is that important. It can be casual, relaxed playing; it can be a structured warm-up; it can be with the drum or without it. The key is that your muscles should be warm — pumped with blood and oxygen — before you play fast. Reaching your top speed with cold hands is one of the fastest ways to injure them.
Try to add a stretching session as well: fifteen to twenty minutes into the practice, once the hands are warm, and again at the end of it.
04Proper technique
I have written before about the importance of relaxed hands — the wrists and the palms especially. You can eat well, warm up faithfully, and do yoga every day — if your technique is bad, your hands will hurt eventually. Actively look for a sense of letting go in your hands. Study your technique properly, from a teacher you trust, and never ignore your body’s signals.
Locked muscles are the strongest catalysts for injury. Against them there is one habit — and repeated, it will gradually rewrite your playing for the better.
Every time your muscles lock — stop, and see if you can let go.
05Community
Sounds cheesy, right? But playing with other people, listening to other people, sharing with other people — a real sense of togetherness — has been shown again and again to matter not only mentally but physically. Research on social connection keeps arriving at the same conclusion: it is one of the strongest protective factors a body can have. For a musician, community is not a luxury around the music. It is part of the health of the player.
If you are serious about your musical journey, become serious about the supportive layers you wrap around it. Help yourself improve.
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Live online lessons across four instruments. Keep reading: Discipline Is a Skill · The Creative Ceremony · The Invisible Roots