Isometric Exercise

Just encountered this concept for the first time: It's interesting to relate it to keybedding, as well as with the concept of fingers that only support pressures from the arm. Strictly speaking, even the most skeletal of balance involves a small ongoing activity. However, I think this gives an additional perspective on what the difference is between healthy activity and needless activity. Healthy activity would basically be what the article defines as "yielding isometric"- where the activity balances out the force that would otherwise collapse the hand. Matthay's kebedding would the "overcoming isometric"- where the force is trying to press into an immovable keybed- rather than merely performing the role of stopping the knuckles from falling down. Obviously reality just is what it is and the basic concept exists regardless of whether there's a term for it. However, discovering that there are terms for these concepts and general writings about them helps to clarify things further still for me. I'm also coming to understand the idea of pushing to consolidate the structure more. While that would come under the "overcoming isometric" (as far as the arm's role is concerned), it's a good way of testing out the integrity of the balancing muscle actions- when done very lightly and with full awareness. When you have full control over whether you exert arm-pressure or not, just the slightest additional press is very revealing- as long as you can be sure of releasing it again. I think what I had failed to do before to feel the hand pushing . I pushed inwards with both hand and arm- rather than use a gentle arm push to check the hand was pushing away properly. Anyway, I think this provides a very useful way of relating some accepted scientific concepts to the idea of fingers that might only support, rather than move. To play the piano that way would be equivalent to going to the gym and spending the whole session simply being handed weights, standing like a statue for a while and then having them taken off you. Obviously nobody would expect that to provide good results, if a workout were based primarily upon acting that way. However, it's interesting to draw parallels with the combination of movement and isometrics. Many trainers advise both moving slowly and spending time simply balancing at the top and bottom of each lift. I think there are many clear parallels in piano technique. Bizarrely enough, traditional explanation tend to force the high effort type of isometric while moving keys, but claim that it needs to duck out of the low effort action of balancing at the keybed. It strikes me as being comparable to standing beside a wall and pressing it as hard as you can every few seconds and then releasing, compared to doing gentle press-ups against it, with pauses in between. High effort isometric pressures are where the damage occurs.