Locked Elbow

hi, how should i go about fixing an elbow that tends to lock into one position while im playing?

Difficult to say, but for what it's worth: Possibly the elbow is locking because it is trying to take over the work of the fingers and hand. Generally all the misplaced tension anywhere above the wrist tends to be ascribable to this. Are the lumbrical and interosseous muscles at the "root" of your fingers working enough to generate a naturally healthy arch in your hand? Another possibility: an imbalance between the inside and outside of the hand. You can see this flaw in my own hand in my film: I let my hand slope down to the outside, to the fifth finger in other words, and this leads to a certain need to stiffen somewhere higher up. The muscular control from higher up prevents further "lazy leaning" in the hand. I have now resolved this anomaly by a shift in perception: instead of seeing the five fingers constitute the "cathedral arch" where thumb & fifth are the outside walls, I see the SECOND finger as one wall, the fifth as the other. The thumb has become an outrigger strut or in cathedral terms, a flying buttress. Sensing and cultivating this further differentiation in hand function may well help your elbow release. Paradoxically enough, it is a slight EFFORT in the arm to bring the elbow a little more to the outside, thus bringing the hand up into this new version of cathedral structure, that facilitates this release in the elbow. Thanks to Seymour Fink, whose video was responsible for this new development in my own technique. AFF

... Paradoxically enough, it is a slight EFFORT in the arm to bring the elbow a little more to the outside, thus bringing the hand up into this new version of cathedral structure, that facilitates this release in the elbow. I can see this "upper arm flying sideways up-and-out" on many great pianists. From my own experience, it takes a lot of upright-directions in the whole trunk and an expanding and free sholdergirdle/back to do this without tension. In some circumstances though, like for example in Chopin's etude Op 10/2, a diagonal-outward position of the hand (in the etude so that 3/4/5 fingers are accomodated to play the chromatic), the elbow tends to fall more inwards , towards the body.

Yes, and for years I was against the "classic arm out" - pianists waving their arms around like they were ducks trying to take off. I too saw the advantage to letting the elbow relax or sink slightly to the inside. When I tried to put my hand in this new, "slightly unnatural" position it tended to feel awkward. And I think I was against the "duck-waving" because they were doing that but LOSING all the structural capacity of their hand, emasculating it instead of consolidating it. This latest development in my thinking, comes, as I mentioned, from watching Seymour Fink - the specific chapter segment is 12B. I tried it and the light bulb clicked - the one missing piece from my puzzle. Since then things have been going extremely well, although at first I did have to force myself to "go against nature" and really help my fifth up into its more potent position. Now, a month and some days later, it already feels pretty normal, that sense of unfamiliarity is a thing of the past... There are a couple of blog posts where I write about it: Oh, you already commented on it... well maybe some other readers will be interested... AFF

There are a couple of blog posts where I write about it: Oh, you already commented on it... well maybe some other readers will be interested... AFF This link is no longer working. Is there some other place where we can find this post? Thanks!

I moved the blog here: Not sure if all the posts have been backed up, but give it a try. Jovan

I moved the blog here: Not sure if all the posts have been backed up, but give it a try. Jovan Thanks, Unfortunately the post is not there. Is there any chance you can retrieve it from the old blog?

I think this is what you ve been looking for: change of mind about piano technique February 20th, 2008 Lately I watched parts of Seymour Fink’s DVD, Mastering Piano Technique, and part 12B hit me like a ton of bricks. Avoiding ulnar deviation is not bad!!! This one section about moving the arm into the fifth finger to help it play, exposes a major weakness of my own approach. You can see it in my film: to illustrate the second, transverse arch of the hand, I allow my metacarpal-phalangeal ridge to slope down to my fifth finger. But this lowers its potency! I also demonstrate how to rotate in leaping to a high note played with the fifth finger, thus emptying out the fifth finger’s metacarpal-phalangeal arch and weakening it. I developed these strategies because I saw people trying to bring out the top voice by stiffening the whole outside ridge of their hand and I wanted to cure that. I had other good reasons as well: I had seen many avoiding ulnar deviation to avoid injury, but they were consequently collapsing their entire arch, and also pulling their thumb away from the board, thus forcing it to make a big, ungainly movement to get back to the board for its next note. Ulnar deviation helped me to equalize the length of my thumb to that of my other fingers, thus, I thought, making my whole hand more functional. So now comes a major recant: what I didn’t see was this: when I equalized my thumb’s length to that of my other fingers, I dis-equalized the length of my four fingers! I was losing more than I was gaining, but didn’t realize it. Because I rightly saw the thumb’s function as an independent entity from the four fingers making it equal in importance, I tried to make it equal in function as well - but this is stupid! Four fingers can stand as a secure structure more easily than one thumb. Thus it feels much more secure to play with a “fifth finger orientation” as Thomas Mark puts it, and leave the thumb to stick out to the inside as a kind of outrigger. The past few days I’ve been putting this into practice and changing the entire way I play piano - at age 53 and after a film and two books!!! I really swing my arm forward and in to my fifth finger any time it plays. This does pull my thumb away from the board (what I used to consider a no-no), but that pulling actually helps it feel its independent outrigger function. Look at videos of the greats: their thumbs stick out to the inside; they are not just hanging relaxed. It looks almost awkward - in a way, it goes against nature as Micheal Furstner puts it - but it is functional. I don’t experience it as fifth finger orientation but more as a 2nd-3rd-4th-5th finger orientation. Those four constitute a wonderfully secure structure, and I feel my whole arm - both its bones - moving in in a straight line behind those four fingers and creating a structural alignment and integrity which is the hallmark of my approach, but ironically enough, which I never fully realized until now! I finally have myself the total ease I have been talking about for years! It is a fairly muscular action: I feel a real, robust effort in my upper arm which comes forward to make this happen. I also feel my pelvis rock forward in synchronicity with the movement. You can feel the movement yourself by doing the following: Place your hand on your thigh or a table top and roll it forward so it folds over your fingers. Your fingers lie on their backs and your wrist goes forward over them. Feel how your upper arm participates in this, and your pelvis. You can either feel that the fingers pull the upper arm / pelvis forward, or that the pelvis rocks forward making the whole thing happen. Leave your thumb out of it. Leave your thumb sticking to the inside, and make this a movement only of your hand itself. When your hand finds its functional integrity, it allows your thumb to be fully free and functional too. Watch Seymour’s 12B to get more ideas on this. More from me later… Any response to this? What happens when you try it? AFF