Tendinitis...!

Hello everybody, I want to write about my current concerns , i'm going to tell my story; last year i had gotten a horrible tendinitis on my right wrist, after playing chopin's polonaise op.44, i have seen many doctors, and did everything i can, the tendinitis was on/off for quite a while, and i 'm beginning to become depressed because of this , now it's back again, i'm on break; i don't know what to do anymore, it's not hurting really badly (like last year) but i can't play comfortably... last week, after a horrible prestation of chopin's ballade n°4 i gave, i'm concerned about my other problem, which is playing Fortissimo , and stregth, i saw the dvd of mr. fraser; and i need more advices, i'm 22 years old, and i'm playing piano since 8 (no stop) ; as i don't have a teacher since 4 years, (because of my tight schedule in the university) i want to have advices , on persons who got tendinitis like mine, or persons who didn't play fortissimo, and got rid of these problems; thank you very much

Welcome to the forum, Eric! I'll take a shot at answering your questions. Several years a go I developed tendonitis in both arms. It wasn't severe, but was enough to make playing painful. Eventually I found Alan's book and DVD which played a large part in solving the problem (the other key factor was the Alexander Technique). My understanding of the issue is that the tendons get overused when the flexor muscles in the arms are overused (they move the medial and distal joints of the fingers) and the innate muscles of the hand, the lumbricals and interossei are under used. Much of Alan's method is about getting the lumbricals and interossei to do their right work to activate the fingers and generate the arch structure of the hand. This reduces the work of the flexors (which are attached to the fingers by tendons) and allows the right balance of work across the playing mechanism. Alan's method also contains ways to play forte and fortissimo without the usual excess of tension we associate with it. In essence he teaches functionality (which provides any strength you might require). I'm happy to answer any more questions you might have. There are others on the forums with more knowledge than myself and I'm sure they'll chip into the discussion, and it's usually not long before Alan himself contributes an answer.

hey , thank you for the answer; i didn't read the book, that he wrote ; just saw the dvd, but saw it long time ago, i have to watch it again; do you think i can manage to play forte in a short period of time (i mean less than a year?) also it may sounds like a stupid question; do you advice me , to play pieces that require strength to build up my stregth? because i think that if you just plays nice calm nocturnes by chopin, you will never get much into the problem; comparing to play hysterical pieces with a lot of heavy chords ...? than you very much

Hello Eric, welcome to the forum! Playing forte damages your hand when there is a collapse inherent in the forte. Learning to use your structure means learning to have it not give way on the impact of playing a loud chord for instance, but not to stiffen either. This means learning to use the right muscles. The trouble is, if you are already injured, you can't learn t use the right muscles by normal "strength" exercise. You have to retrain at a very low level of effort, through sensitivity and understanding. In a word, let the bones take the stress of impact instead of the muscles. Train your muscles to stand your hand up. Make sure every finger movement happens before impact (a key-moving action) instead of after impact (a structure-saving action). Hard to say more from this distance. All best wishes, AFF

Thank you mr Fraser, you have answered my question, I just wanted to know if it was too late for me, but apparently, i can always catch up by proper training; I will begin to retrain myself according to your advices; thank you very much;

It's never too late. I came to Yugoslavia at age 35 and started rebuilding my technique from the ground floor up... Good luck! AFF