How To Avoid Piano Injuries

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To become proficient at the piano, most pianists practice on a daily basis. Concert pianists take this a step further, often practicing 4-5 hours per day! As a concert pianist myself, it’s really important to find ways to avoid injuries to the hands and arms when playing that much each day.

Are you wondering how to avoid piano injuries? To avoid piano injuries, pianists should take frequent breaks while playing. It’s advisable to rest the hands at least every 20 minutes to avoid any strain on the fingers or arms. Pianists should also stretch their fingers. Warming up with scales and other short technical exercises will also help.

There are many other ways to prevent injuries while playing the piano. In this article, I’ll talk about 9 different ways you can help protect your fingers and arms, and still enjoy the music. Before we get into that, let’s analyze what causes piano injuries in the first place.

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What Causes Piano Injuries

Piano injuries are muscular injuries. It happens when pianists practice for long periods of time without rest. The muscles don’t get enough oxygen, which is crucial for blood flow. The type of music you play has a great effect on the amount of blood flow too.

Imagine playing octaves or falling thirds in rapid succession. The more work your fingers have to do, the more oxygen is needed to do that activity.

When a serious injury is about to occur, the pianist usually has a clear warning. The area will start to feel irritated or warm. In some cases, the skin may turn red in that area.

Even daily activities may seem harder to accomplish than they normally would. Simple things like lifting a book or writing with a pencil will feel much tougher to do. This is because all of those muscles have become sensitive from overuse.

Outside of overplaying, poor posture is another common cause of piano injuries. Particularly for pianists who don’t sit high enough at the piano. The wrong posture can cause the pianist to put too much strain on their back, forearms, and hands.

The most common piano injuries are tendonitis, arthritis, carpal tunnel, and other types of inflammation.

1. Take Frequent Practice Breaks

The first step you can take to preventing a significant piano injury is to take breaks. Advanced pianists especially need to to do this more frequently than a beginner.

For every hour that you play, a solid 20-minute break should follow. This allows for enough time to let the muscles relax and for a pianist to mentally regroup as well. During the practice break, pianists should refrain from using their finger muscles and arms if possible.

Try not to use a smartphone, type on the computer, play video games, or anything that requires the muscles to be in use. While those are different activities, they still use some of the same muscle groups.

Ideally, pianists should take a break the moment they feel pain. Pain in the arms or fingers is an immediate indicator that muscles are being overused.

2. Stretching And Massaging The Fingers

Because playing the piano requires a lot of oxygen for the muscles, it’s important to stretch and massage the fingers. Stretching also helps pianists with small hands, especially with limiting any strain trying to reach notes that are too beyond your grip.

Doing this allows for increased blood flow to the areas that are affected. You can also rotate the wrists and massage the forearms too to get the same effect.

Some pianists do this before they play, and others afterward. I suggested doing this frequently during the lesson, perhaps every 20 minutes or so. This helps ensure the area is refreshed again, and that you have enough oxygen flowing to those muscles.

Below is a video of a couple of stretching exercises I find to be really useful. Take time to do this before you play, after you play and during each practice break.

Watch this video on YouTube

3. Practice Away From The Piano

It’s entirely possible to practice the piano without actually playing the keys. I have many of my piano students play on the fallboard of the instrument, or on a table sometimes.

This allows them to still work on the fingering patterns, and arm movements without needing press down any keys. This is a good way to help build muscle memory without overusing them.

Other ways to practice away from the piano include score study and listening to recordings. Many times this can allow a pianist to figure out how to approach a piece in a better way before adding the keys into the mix. Most importantly, practicing this way helps relieve stress on the muscles.

4. Improve Your Piano Technique

In some cases, pain in the arms and fingers is an indicator that the piano technique being used needs refinement. The bridge of the hand, the placement of the fingers, the height of the arms, and the approach to the keys all can cause pain if done improperly.

To learn proper piano technique on your own is a challenge. This is one reason many adult pianists run into issues with pain trying to teach themselves the instrument. I highly recommend choosing a high-quality piano teacher.

Piano teachers have the knowledge to help you develop a good playing technique. They can help you learn how to properly play piano scales, play difficult passages of repertoire, and gradually improve your overall finger dexterity.

Many expert piano teachers will suggest certain learning approaches to help deal with injury. This includes elements of the Alexander technique, Taubman approach, Suzuki method, and much more.

5. Sit In The Correct Position

It’s important to play the piano with the correct posture. Too often young pianist will either sit too slow or too high at the piano. Knowing how to sit at the piano is an absolute must if you want to avoid injury.

When sitting too low, too much stress is put on the fingers themselves to make a decent sound out of the keys. This puts a great amount of stress on the wrists because of the arms resting below the keyboard.

The result is some pain while playing within 5 minutes of practicing. If this sounds like you, consider adjusting the bench height so that the arms are parallel to the keyboard.

Make sure to also sit tall and upright, and have enough distance between the arms and keys. Any bent elbows, or elbows that are too straight means your position needs work.

6. Practice Consistently

When you haven’t been to the gym in a while, starting up a workout routine again can lead to sore muscles. Playing the piano is very much the same. With more consistency comes fewer injuries.

The muscles in the hand need to constantly be kept in piano playing shape. Even if you don’t have a lot of time to practice each day, simply playing technical exercises goes a long way in maintaining finger strength and ability.

As a general rule, never go more than two days without practicing. For each day that is missed, pianists should practice a portion of that missed time in their next practice session.

To help make your practice more consistent and to avoid injury, I suggest putting together a practice schedule. Through a practice schedule, you can assign certain times of the day to practice.

This includes the length of the practice session, the days they will take place, and even how many breaks you plan to take. It’s also a wise idea to plan out the repertoire that will be played each day.

If you know that one day you plan to play difficult repertoire, then it’s advisable to place more practice breaks on that day. On the other hand, if easy repertoire is on another day, then you could take shorter practice breaks.

7. Keeping Your Piano In Good Shape

Poorly maintained pianos will often lead to potential injuries. For instance, a piano with very heavy action is going to put more stress on the fingers and forearms.

Likewise, a piano that does not have strong enough action will not develop pianists muscles properly. This is why it’s a good idea to practice with a digital piano with hammer action if you cannot afford an acoustic one.

For those with acoustic pianos, it’s a good idea to have the piano regularly tuned. In addition to that, simple regulation work like piano voicing and action adjustment should be done periodically.

Another way to protect pianos is to use a dehumidifier so that the tuning remains stable, and all of the action parts remain in position.

8. Play Easy Repertoire

The kind of repertoire a pianist plays has a huge impact on hand injuries. For example, there’s an enormous difference between the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata, vs the last movement of the piece.

If a pianist were to practice the same passages again and again for hours, those same muscles would become overworked. This is why I suggest working in some easy repertoire into every practice session, especially after breaks.

Easy repertoire can consist of short works, longer note durations, simpler chords, and overall less passagework. Use the repertoire as an opportunity to work on ear training, sight reading, or even just to test out hand positioning.

Each practice session needs a healthy balance. This way, pianists develop various types of touch and a stronger ability to switch between different types of playing styles.

9. Take Shorter Piano Lessons

An often overlooked way to limit piano injuries is to take shorter piano lessons. This is more common in the college and professional level of piano lessons to experience a lesson longer than one hour.

While more information can be digested in these longer lessons, playing too much in them can lead to pain.

The same can be said for younger children who have not developed strong enough playing muscles yet. They also need shorter lessons as they build up their endurance so that they can play their best. This is how long piano lessons should be.