Question for piano players.

Gods*Armygirl · 02-11-2009, 11:40 PM

Does playing the piano cause your wrists to hurt at all? I play sometimes and mine hurt so I'm wondering if it happens to anyone else or if I might have hurt them some other way.

Gwenny · 02-12-2009, 12:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gods*Armygirl

Does playing the piano cause your wrists to hurt at all? I play sometimes and mine hurt so I'm wondering if it happens to anyone else or if I might have hurt them some other way.

How long have you been playing? When I first started out playing piano it took me a few months to build up my wrist strength. I've been playing now for 10 years and I have very little wrist pain ever.

Nate · 02-12-2009, 07:23 AM

If you're playing any instrument and it's causing you pain, you need to stop and evaluate what you might be doing wrong. Unless you're practicing hours and hours each day, your wrists should not hurt.

You're probably using way too much effort and playing with too much tension. Think about how your hands feel when you're typing on a keyboard. This is an activity that most people can do without a lot of tension, because they've been doing it so long and naturally moved to a highly efficient, low movement, low tension method of typing. The hand position and hand (and arm!) tension you're used to when typing is approximately the same as that you should use for the piano. Wrists low (it's impossible to type well with your wrists floating way up in the air; same for playing piano), fingers nicely curved (you can't type or play piano well with the pads of your fingers), and all of the tension from your shoulders down to your fingertips released (since we usually type or work on computers for hours at a time each day, this is a necessity to avoid pain in this daily activity; same for piano).

Gods*Armygirl · 02-12-2009, 08:29 AM

So it isn't normal? Ok. I'm probably not getting it from playing piano then. Nate, I'll try and watch how I'm typing/playing and see if that has anything to do with it. I've only started getting this pain about a year ago.

And I've been playing since 2nd grade. I'm in 10th now. So about 9 1/2 years.

crazymoose · 02-12-2009, 08:34 AM

If you're practicing a lot that may be it. But one thing my piano teacher always told me is that when you play piano, your wrists should be mostly like spaghetti. You should be able to just use your arms and fingers for any strength you need. Your wrists are just kind of like a loose-ish joint holding them together.