How do your muscles feel right now? Yeah, this minute. Close your eyes and do a quick scan of your body. Use some gentle joint movement to check in. If you're like me, you'll notice a lot.
Which area did you notice most?
Here's the dilemma: with so much playing, when do we have time to take care of that?
Rehab and physical therapy happen after an injury or surgery. They are something we need to avoid in order to continue working. However, they are not assumed or built into a musician's job. You're paid for time playing, and that's it. The answer for us lies before injury. You can do what I do:
Prehabilitation
This is something I picked up accidentally. It encompasses a lot of things. I run and worked out in high school. I attended my Dad's road races and noticed some things others did that he did not do. Here are my top 3 prehab things that I try to do daily, plus one bonus tip.
1) yoga: call it stretching or whatever works for you, but flow through movements and put your body into poses that challenge it. This builds strength, coordination, and balance. It's not as easy as it looks, trust me, I still consider myself terrible at it. But that's half of the fun!
2) foam rolling: yoga is not capable of lengthening already shortened muscles. It uses what flexibility we already have. Great if you have it, and hard if you lost it. Foam rolling is more useful than even dynamic stretching because it breaks up the pressure points and build up. It gets the blood flowing to heal any small muscle tears.
3) Self-massage: I can't afford massage very often, so I use my own two hands. Always move towards the heart. Sometimes I do it without moving the muscle I'm working on, and sometimes I do. Each has different benefits. It all gets the lymph moving and heat getting into the spots to speed recovery.
Tip = awareness
The best way to treat a problem is before it even starts. Left alone, it will build until our bodies demand our attention there. The same principles are true with stress causing illnesses. We have to make the time to listen to our bodies. This aids our longevity, mental health, and enjoyment of our art.
I'm thankful I learned these early on. They are at the core of my routine. Do you have go-to prehab exercises? Share below so that we can all keep learning together.
I'll share more prehab tips in future posts, but contact now for a free consultation to get tips tailored to your situation! See you in the next post!