The joint nearest the fingertip buckles inward on the fourth and fifth fingers, only in the right hand, and only once I am ten or so minutes into practice. Cold, at the start of a session, everything holds fine. There is a tightness that builds in my forearm before it starts happening. Self taught, about two years in, and I practise for an hour most evenings without much of a break.
On the fourth and fifth specifically: it is a coordination problem, not a strength problem. Those fingers share tendons with their neighbours and no amount of isolated squeezing changes the anatomy. Please do not buy a finger strengthener gadget, they have injured more pianists than they have helped. Slow practice with a good hand shape does the entire job.
Coming from the lifting side, this is one of the few places where the strength framing genuinely does not transfer. The load is trivial, the control is everything.
Worth separating fatigue from pain. Tiredness that resolves after a rest is one thing; anything sharp, or numbness or tingling in the fingers, is a stop and get it looked at properly by a physiotherapist or a doctor. And if you can stretch to two or three lessons even as a committed self taught player, a teacher watching your arm for an hour will spot in five minutes what a forum cannot see at all.
Three lessons was the best money I spent in five years of self teaching. Not ongoing, just a technique audit.
Try scales at half your usual tempo with an exaggeratedly loose wrist for a week. Boring, and the collapse disappeared for me because I stopped gripping.
@chapter_cass · 8mo ago · 3 replies
Collapsing after ten minutes with forearm tightness beforehand is a fatigue signature, and fatigue at two years usually means the arm is not supporting the hand, so the small finger joints are doing structural work they were not built for.
Check the boring things first. Bench height, so that with your fingers on the keys your forearm is roughly level with or very slightly above the keyboard, and your elbow is not below key level. Bench distance, because sitting too close makes you pull your wrists in and lock the forearm. Most people who are self taught are sitting too low and too close.
Then the shape. Play a five note block chord, all fingers down together, and notice the natural arch of the hand and the feeling of the arm resting into the keys rather than the fingers holding the hand up. That is the shape you want to keep in a scale.
And stop at the first collapse. That moment is genuinely useful information, not a failure to push through. Ten focused minutes, two minute break, another ten. An hour of continuous playing at two years in is how people acquire injuries and habits that take longer to undo than they took to learn.
Reply
Report
@etym_elliot · 8mo ago
Sitting too low and too close describes me exactly. Also I have never once taken a break inside an hour.
Reply
Report
@sprinter_sage · 8mo ago
The bench height thing is worth measuring rather than eyeballing. I raised mine 4cm and a tension problem I had had for a year improved in a fortnight.
Reply
Report