Remember the Reverse Volleyball Stretch?  It’s really a stretch that opens and relaxes the muscles of your chest.  It’s great for musicians of all kinds because we all spend so much time (and muscle tension), hunched over our instruments.

I think counteracting our habitual closing of the chest is so important, I’ve recently added another chest opener to my routine.  I particularly like this one as a post-practice warm-down.

It’s that time of year again, the beginning of the school year.  Time for new backpacks, new notebooks, and new projects. And for many of us, it’s time to get back into practicing after a summer hiatus.

I always find getting back into playing shape after a break rather arduous.  Inertia is a powerful obstacle, and when I’ve gotten out of the habit of practicing it is hard to get back on many levels:  I don’t sound good, I don’t feel good, and I don’t think good neither!

With that in mind, and hopefully with better grammar, I’ve compiled a list of tips for getting back into shape.  They deal with the musical, physical, and psychological aspects of the process.  Many of the tips, as you might expect, are gentle reminders of good, basic practice technique.  A few of them (see No’s 4 through 6) are just the opposite of what I usually prescribe, and only apply for those first few practice sessions after a break.

1. Know that all your skills will come back.  The first few practice sessions after a break are ALWAYS tricky (for me, day 3 is the worst), but trust me and your past experience: you’ll get back to where you were before.
2. External motivation always trumps inertia, so give yourself a reason to get back into practicing. If you are a student, schedule a lesson.  If you are a professional, find yourself a low-stakes gig (like playing at a retirement home or for friends in a salon setting).
3. Make sure you do your physical warm-ups.  This is so important, it warrants two exclamation points!!  Jumping right back into practice after a break is an easy way to get hurt, and physical warm-ups go a long way toward preventing injury.
4. Speaking of preventing injury, make your first few practice sessions shorter than normal.  For example, my normal warm-up routine (stretches, long tones, scales, etc) takes 50 minutes to an hour.  After a hiatus, I do a “best-of” version that takes just under 30 minutes:  stretches, condensed long-tones, and my two favorite scale patterns.
5. Play something you like, not something you love.  For me, one of the main obstacles to getting back into practicing is how bad I sound, so playing a piece of music that I have a big emotional investment in feels too discouraging.
6. Don’t practice the hardest part first.  Ordinarily, that’s a great way to practice a piece, but not for your first few sessions back.  It can be disheartening, and can lead to the kind of poor practice technique that leads to injury. For me, this means no memorization work—it’s just too challenging right off the bat.
7. Have you been thinking about something you’d like to change in your playing? Now is a good time to start experimenting with it.  Just remember tip No. 8:
8. Go easy on yourself! The first few days back from a break are NOT the time to be berating yourself for lack of discipline, and they are definitely not the time to try and judge whether or not you are “talented” or “a good flutist.”  They are exactly the time to do whatever corny thing you can think of to make it nicer to get over the hump:  give your self a gold star in your notebook, take yourself out to ice cream after day 3, practice in your pajamas while lying in bed, whatever it takes!

In a manual transmission car, first gear has only one function: to overcome inertia and take the car from still to moving.  The first few days of practice after a break are like first gear.  Their only function is to get you back at your instrument, and start you getting back into playing shape.  Don’t expect to solve any big problems on those few days, and don’t expect to learn volumes of music either.  Just getting over inertia is enough. You can shift into high gear in a few days.

Photo credits: School girls by zedzap, Gear stick by johnmarchan

Do you need another reason to add physical warm-ups to your daily practice routine? Here it is: As a ritual, your physical warm-ups can have a profoundly positive impact on your experience of performing. Those stretches and exercises that you do every day can eventually become a ritual that  focuses your mind and readies your spirit for the act of making music.

If you’ve ever been to a religious service, you’ve seen many examples of rituals:  from the small and simple gesture of bowing one’s head in prayer to the more involved actions surrounding Communion or Baptism (can you tell I have a Catholic background?). A secular example is the ceremonial taking down and folding of the flag at the end of the day.  Simple or complex, a ritual is a physical pattern one follows that has symbolic meaning.

One of the important things about a ritual is exactly that symbolic meaning, its spiritual/emotional/mental component.  Let’s take genuflecting as an example: the physical act is touching the floor with one knee, at the end of a pew, but the symbolic meaning is something along the lines of “I bow before God to show respect and receptivity.” Compare this to the case of your physical warm-ups:  while you are literally stretching certain muscles, you are symbolically saying, “Now I am getting ready for my regular practice.” (The key word in that sentence is “regular.”  A warm-up routine will not become a ritual unless you do it every time you practice.)

Yet the benefits of your warm-up ritual go beyond just signaling your readiness to practice. First,
you can use your warm-up ritual to great effect before performances.  Performing can be so anxiety-making because it is so unusual; relative to how many times you practice, you perform very little.  Doing your daily ritual warm-up before a performance can put you into (or closer to) your daily mindset.  It’s like saying to yourself, “Ok, no big deal.  This is just another practice day,” which in turn makes you feel more calm, and lowers the emotional stakes.

Another benefit is a little harder to describe, but no less important in the long run.  When you incorporate physical warm-ups into your daily practice, you eventually create a higher meaning to the physical work.  You not only ready your body to play, but you ready your mind and even spirit to play.  Your mind gets focused, and your spirit opens up to the power of music.  In short, you become more fully present.  There’s a reason all religions have rituals:  they work.

I experienced this in a very strong way last year—not before a performance but before my wedding!  [include pic]  On the morning of the big day, I was pretty excited, and pretty nervous, and was not at all sure what to do to get ready.  I had carved out a little bit of ‘alone time’ in the morning, and found myself pacing around the room, at a loss for how to prepare for this once-in-a-lifetime event.  You know when you’re so nervous that you feel trapped inside yourself, and not present to the place or other people around you?  That’s how it was.

I don’t know what possessed me to do it, since really, a wedding is not a concert, but I thought I’d do my flute stretches.  I guess it’s just because that’s what I usually do to prepare for something big.

The happy brides (I'm the one with blond hair)

It was amazing how effective it was. I went from feeling a little crazy and a lot nervous to thinking, “Oh, I’m me.  I’m ready to go.”  I felt like not only did my shoulders drop from up around my ears, but I became present to the moment: my mind focused and my spirit relaxed.

So if a few stretches, slowly crafted into a ‘get ready’ ritual over years of practice, can do that for a nervous bride, imagine what they can do for you before your next performance!  Get started now, and you’ll experience the benefits over your whole career.

PS.  If you’d like some suggestions on what stretches to do on a daily basis, click on “Physical Warm-ups” on the Categories sidebar at the right, and you can watch my video instructions on neck, shoulder, arm and hand stretches.

Photo Credits:  Yoga on the Beach by mikebaird, Prayer by prakhar, Wedding photo by Derek Goodwin

The following are two hand stretches that I learned from the composer Michael Colgrass.  He gave a class at IU, back in ye olden times when I was a student there and before it became the Jacobs School of Music.

I’ve been using these stretches as part of my warm-up routine ever since.  I hope you will find them as useful as I have.

And a little prize for those of you who have made it to the bottom of this post: