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(Reprinted by Permission from Open Mic New Mexico Magazine)<br />
It is possible to prevent injuries that many people…and<br />
especially musicians…get. The best way is to be smart<br />
about it! An injury is overcoming the strength of a tissue.<br />
We can help stop this breakdown in two main ways: by<br />
helping the tissue be more resilient and by making it<br />
stronger. In this issue we’ll go over resiliency and how to<br />
“tune yourself.”<br />
Imagine that I handed you some Silly Putty that had been<br />
sitting out. You pop open that blue plastic egg, you use<br />
two hands to hold the silly stuff and then you pull quickly<br />
in opposite directions. What would happen? Most likely<br />
the putty would snap in two. Now imagine what would<br />
happen if you played with the putty for a few minutes.<br />
What would happen if you gently pulled it apart now?<br />
Strrrrreeeeeeeeeetch, is what I’m guessing. Our soft tissues<br />
(muscles, tendons, ligaments) are a lot like that.<br />
Soft tissues sometimes resist physical stress better than<br />
they do at other times. We can increase the odds of trouble<br />
happening if we are smart about it. It comes down to this.<br />
warm is stretchier, cold tissue is more brittle. Saying it<br />
another way…tissues that are warmed up resist the physical<br />
stress placed on them by stretching. Cold tissues are less<br />
resistant and are more likely to respond with microscopic<br />
tears that create pain and irritation.<br />
Have you ever noticed that athletes don’t roll out of bed,<br />
put their shoes on and try to set a running speed record?<br />
Baseball players don’t get off the bench and go right to<br />
batting. They warm up in the on-deck circle. Basketball<br />
players warm up before the game. Why? To warm-up<br />
their tissues…muscles, joints, ligaments…to transition<br />
from cold to warm to protect them. Nicely it also prepares<br />
muscles for the music to come. A lovely win-win situation.<br />
Most of us feel better when our tissues are warm. We feel<br />
ready to go. So…how do musicians go about warming<br />
up the soft tissue? Transition to actions that are similar<br />
to the future activity, but less stressful. Let’s say you are a<br />
drummer. There will be a lot of action from the shoulders<br />
to the hands, and also the legs. Easy movements of the<br />
hands, wrists, shoulders and shoulder blades will go a<br />
long way for the upper body. Then add some leg, feet and<br />
thigh movements.<br />
TUNE<br />
YOURSELF<br />
by Christopher Sovereign,<br />
LMT,COSM,CBAT,CNMT<br />
From a standing position with arms at your sides, let’s<br />
go through a warm-up routine. Start with your fingers.<br />
Wiggle them gently. Now move your wrists in a circular<br />
motion, back and forth. Then add some gentle elbow<br />
action. When you get to the shoulders, we need to do<br />
this in two parts. The first is to move the upper arm at<br />
the shoulder joint in circles, raising your arm above your<br />
head. These movements are especially good. Next, shrug<br />
your shoulders. With this you are working the shoulder<br />
blade muscles, which often are not moved enough. Bring<br />
your shoulder blades back toward your spine and then<br />
away from the spine. Once again this is a circular motion.<br />
Take it easy and slow in the beginning, gradually<br />
increasing the effort, making the movements a bit larger<br />
and stronger. The act of transitioning is very important.<br />
Listen to your body to see if it is happy with these<br />
movements. If you are going too fast, your body will<br />
probably tell you and you will need to slow down. That is<br />
the #1 challenge – increasing the actions slowly without<br />
going so far that it irritates things along the way.<br />
When you do it correctly, you will end your warm-up<br />
with the same effort with which you play and not much<br />
more. You ought to feel warm and invigorated. If you feel<br />
tired, then you did too much that time. Turn it down a few<br />
notches the next time you warm up.<br />
You can use these same principles for warming up<br />
other parts of your body (or voice). Remember, easy<br />
to start, slowly progressing to more effort. This warmup<br />
routine only takes three to five minutes and “tunes”<br />
your muscles, tendons and ligaments…making them<br />
more resilient.<br />
Christopher Sovereign, LMT,COSM, CBAT, CNMT<br />
has a successful medical massage practice in Albuquerque<br />
and Santa Fe where he assesses and treats soft tissue pain<br />
and injury problems. In 35+ years of professional massage<br />
he has worked on thousands of people (including touring<br />
road shows) using many different techniques. He is triple<br />
certified in Neuromuscular therapy, Ben Benjamin’s<br />
advanced work and sports massage. For the past<br />
14 years he has taught in seminars nationwide. t<br />
The WESTERN WAY<br />
Spring 2016 | 11
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