Practice Habits

As a young musician, I was brought up to believe that training is everything. My view of training was very narrow, it was basically the number of hours I’d spend practicing violin or piano. The higher the better. A part of me has always liked structure and discipline. In many ways, it provided tangible results. I kind of applied that mentality to everything I did, especially academics. I burnt myself out many times. Sure, the early stages of learning anything require much disciplined work, but eventually the time comes when balance becomes more effective than just grinding out hours of practicing. And how you pace those practice hours becomes more important than the number of hours you actually practice (read: less is more).

But as I got older (and matured!), I also began to realize that the more I learned about the world around me and other aspects of life in general, the better I became as an artist. While pure technique is built in the isolation of a practice room, developing as an artist often happens away from the instrument.

Early on, I also became aware of repetitive stress injuries. In high school, I got my first one. It took well over a year for it to completely heal. Then I came across two fantastic musicians who each gave me the template that I still use today:

• Practice for 2-3h (ideally), and no more than 5h (only when needed!).

• Therapeutic hours: practice for 50 min., take a break for 10 min.

• Mindful practice: systemic and highly-structured. Practice with your mind, not your fingers, I used to be told.

I try to take one day off playing every two weeks unless I’m in the middle of a performance run where my schedule won’t allow it. Your muscles, and your mind, need rest. Otherwise, similar to repetitive stress injuries, your brain encounters mental fatigue, and pushing through only makes it worse. To put it in a nutshell: the anterior cingulate cortex, which regulates attention, becomes exhausted when required to work through long sustained periods of practicing or playing without enough rest. When you hit this ‘wall’ your focus drops and mistakes become more frequent, despite the fact that you’re still ‘practicing.’ In reality, you’re on auto-pilot and your muscle memory is carrying you through the hours. When you lose focus, there’s a dopamine drop in the brain’s reward terminal. So you no longer feel the fulfillment of practice = good results. In contrary, you’re not achieving anything and as a result, you start to lose motivation.

So, take a day or two off as needed. Or a week if you can. Plan it out if your playing schedule is busy, and this is particularly important for music students who have to play/practice 8h+ daily on a regular basis.

Around 12 years old...proof that I had good posture (and probably why I still don't have back problems after so many years of playing!).