10 years ago by
A Pianist
Good question! One thing is making that happen, but how to feel exactly which muscles?
I isolate the work of the lumbricals. Place the tips of your fingers near the edge of a table top so most of your hand is off the table, fingers hyper-extended. In this position, Furstner tells us, the interossei cannot work - they need a little bit of flexion from the lumbricals to get them started. Presumably then, if I try to raise my metacarpal-phalangeal joint in this position, it's my lumbricals that do the work.
But if I am already somewhat flexed, how to feel that my interossei have taken over from the lumbricals? How to inhibit the work of the lumbricals? I don't know. Can any of you anatomists out there shed light on this?
If anybody can enlighten us here, I would appreciate it!
In any case, practically speaking, we want to improve the work of flexion at the metacarpal-phalangeal joint, the "hip joint" of the hand as mini-pelvis, muscles happen to be doing it. Any number of exercises will do for this one: the entire first part of my book and film is devoted solely to this. Here I offer just this one:
Place your hand on a table top and draw your fingertips towards the heel of your hand, without curling any of your finger joints. This effectively isolates the work of the muscles at the metacarpal-phalangeal joint. By the way, some of my students find this very difficult to do, and it is a useful thing for them to develop. They have been so well-trained to curl at the fingertip and medial-proximal joint that they simply cannot inhibit that movement and put the accent on the work of the lumbricals and interossei - piano teachers take note!
I hope this helps!
AFF
