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Strengthening Your Body = Strengthening Your Musicianship

12/7/2015

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by Ainsley Kilgo

Strengthening and conditioning is paramount to optimal music making and performance. There seems to be a lack of specific information regarding healthy regimens for musicians, something The Healthy Musician Project is dedicated to pursuing. As a recent graduate from the Eastman School of Music with a Bachelor’s degree in Saxophone Performance and Music Education, I want to help other musicians improve their spinal health for increased freedom in playing. Music making is an elite sport that requires the body to be resilient and strong. I hope to share my experiences as a student, educator, dancer, and Pilates pedagogue with musicians everywhere.

I am a 5’3, 128 lb female, representing a minority of saxophonists I know. I used to study dance extensively from age four through middle school, so when I began studying music seriously I had a good understanding of injury prevention and body awareness. I knew I would have to strengthen my body to survive the sheer amount of hours expected to hold and play the saxophone in music school. At Eastman I was required to play the soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones. Each one exerts different challenges on the body. Over the course of four years I learned how to condition my core (abdominal and back muscles) to avoid injury and promote healthier posture in my playing. This journey started at the very beginning of my freshman year and continues today.

After my first week at Eastman I knew it was time to get serious about strengthening my back. After seven days of more playing than I had ever done before, I was left with intense, painful muscle knots in my upper back. I promptly joined the YMCA across the street from school and learned to use the weight machines – especially the pull down, seated row, and back extension. I used a small weight while paying full attention to what muscles I was targeting and how my back was moving. An Eastman friend told me about a Pilates class at the Y that I "had to try." I took some Pilates classes as part of my dance training, but I recalled them being repetitive and boring. I ended up being convinced to go to the class later that week with friends. The YMCA Pilates class uses a yoga mat, a ring made of rubber and foam, and a long weighted bar. While these tools seem like they would make the class harder, movements were more focused and easier to complete with these guides. Even though my core was on fire and it hurt to laugh that first week, I was hooked! After that single hour I didn't even notice the knots in my upper back that were troubling me. From that moment I knew I needed to continue Pilates to get relief from the intense daily saxophone playing I was doing. 

The form of Pilates offered at the Carlson Rochester YMCA is called Integrated Movement=Xercise (IM=X for short). Joseph Pilates, a famous dancer, founded Pilates as a conditioning program for elite New York City ballet dancers. IM=X is an approach based on movement research that uses exercises from the Joseph Pilates method designed to be accessible to people from all walks of life. There is an emphasis on spinal elongation – creating space between the vertebrae. This methodology also draws from Alexander Technique to promote healthy breathing and alignment. The class is a series of exercises designed to strengthen the core. A strong core creates a healthy back, something that is truly essential for all musicians to play effectively. 
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After studying IM=X Pilates for four years at the YMCA, I decided to pursue this training method that can be so beneficial for musicians. I traveled to the IM=X Pilates headquarters in New York City days after graduating from Eastman to study with one of the main founders of IM=X. I now teach Pilates at the University of Rochester Goergen Athletic Center and am so excited to share this method with a variety of students. I hope to create a career where I can help others reach their full potential physically and musically by helping them create more efficient bodies. A healthy core and back can open doors to improved movement, stability, and endurance while performing – something that I wish for all musicians.

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Nutrition for Performance (Part 1) 

6/4/2015

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by Drew Worden & Chelsea Nelson
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Nutrition. We hear this word in the mass media everywhere from grocery store tabloids to whistle blowing documentaries to federal research publications, but what does nutrition mean for musicians? How can our eating habits enhance our performance, optimize our practice time, and prevent injury?

In this 3 part blog series we’ll address some of the challenges musicians face when it comes to nutrition, provide some background information about how our body utilizes the fuel we give it, and recommend a Musician’s Diet for optimal performance. 



Common Challenges of Healthy Eating for Musicians

Time to grocery shop, to cook, to clean up… I have to practice!
As musicians we often say we don’t have enough time to eat healthy. “If I only had time to cook! I’ll just have a granola bar — gotta go to rehearsal now!” This is a bit of a catch 22, as eating healthy actually gives us more hours in the day. With intentional healthy eating, we get more work done in less time, reach deeper levels of understanding in our creative selves, enjoy more of our day-to-day music making, and have more energy throughout the day.

Energy I’d rather save my energy for something else, like practicing!
Where do you think our energy actually comes from? FOOD! The way that we feel is largely governed by what we put into our bodies (this can also be read more globally to include other stimuli such as our social relationships, our focus time, our experiences, etc., but we’ll stick to nutrition for today). If you invest time to eat healthy, you’re also investing in everything else you do that day. Your healthy eating makes everythingbetter — it’s not an energy drain, but an energy gain. Additionally, the time and energy you spend preparing a healthy meal or snack will soon become a routine (blog on the power healthy routines coming soon!) where you mentally prepare and reward yourself for treating your body well.

Uncertainty I don't even know where to begin with healthy eating, seems like everybody is telling me this is good and that’s bad…
This is true. There’s an overwhelming amount of fad diets that come in and out of the news. They come and go so frequently because the bottom line is there isn’t one diet that works for everybody (sorry entrepreneurs!). Even the diet we suggest specifically for musicians might need a little tweaking to be ideal for you. Dieting is beneficial because it challenges us to start changing our eating habits in a conscious way, and allows us opportunity to notice the differences in how we feel during the day. You don’t have to know exactly where to begin (though we think we have a pretty good recommendation for you in Parts 2 and 3 of this series…), you just have to start.

The Power of Habit I’ve been eating a certain way for a long time, and it’s mostly working so far, so why bother?
Change is challenging. We have to decide for ourselves that the potential pros of change outweigh the cons of staying the same. We often hear it takes roughly 20 days to form new habits, which is a pretty minimal time investment for something that is going to make your quality of life better for the rest of your life. You don’t have much to lose and everything to gain just by trying.

My stomach can’t handle food before a performance! 
Many musicians say they simply can not eat before a performance. We’ve compiled some research from sports/dance medicine and distilled it for musicians to address this issue of pre and post-performance nutrition guidelines. This is a handout by physical therapist Tom McGary, originally presented in the Keys to Healthy Music class at the Eastman School of Music.

Pre and Post-Performance Nutritional Planning


In our next post, Part 2, we’ll look at specific foods (quick convenient options that musicians often choose — the good and the bad) and how our body utilizes their fuel for music performance. In Part 3, we’ll suggest a Musician Specific Nutrition Plan. 

In the meantime, what types of challenges do you face regarding nutrition as a musician? Do you have any solutions or suggestions for others responding to these challenges? Share your experiences with us in the comment section below. 

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    Authors: Sue, Tom, & Drew with the occasional guest contributor. 

    Research, Musings, and H&W Strategies from the team at The Healthy Musician Project.

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