Originally published August 30 2005
Musicians should stay in shape to play better music
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A study shows that, like athletes, musicians also need physical training to perform their best.
Horvath counted the number of snare drum hits: 5,144, quite a strain on the wrists.
Musicians face a host of problems, from carpal tunnel syndrome and inflamed tendons, to repetitive stress injuries and deafness.
The book has been revised and now is in its fourth printing; Horvath lectures musicians around the country on how to avoid and recover from music-related injuries.
"Even we don't realize how much repetition we subject our body to and the awkward postures instruments require.
Players of most musical instruments face at least some risk of repetitive stress injury.
Professional musicians or serious students, who play hours a day, are most susceptible.
Horvath cites a 1988 study by the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians that found that 76 percent of musicians had sustained a career-threatening injury that required a chunk of time off.
"The theory is that people are practicing their hardest trying to get into orchestras or they are in orchestras for the first time and are overwhelmed with the responsibilities of learning new repertoire," Horvath says, noting that she has seen children as young as 12 suffering overuse injuries.
Our (orchestra) plays 52 weeks, and we play three to four concerts a week with different music, so we're always having to practice next week's music, and conductors like to program blockbusters to bring the audience in."
"If you are stuck on some Brahms piece, you are taxing the same muscles," she says.
"It looks like a Salvador Dali viola," Horvath says.
It's stretched so that the bottom of the instrument is bigger, the length is reduced so the arm doesn't have to extend so far to hold it, and the upper portion is curved off so it's easier to get around it.
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