after playing a very long concert over the course of two days I found that my wrists and back are stiff. Anybody know of some excersizes to stretch that area out or something?

y yes i know a couple, first do a couple like 2-5 pushups and then so the same situps, this will help loosen things up then while standing place your palms together and interlace your fingers rotate your hands so your fingers face toward your body and your wrists are turned you now straighten your arms away from your body, dont let go of your fingers. push forward with your sholders this will stretch your upper back, if you dont feel the stretch then bend at the waist slightly, think of it as rolling down bend till you feel the stretch slightly then back off just a hair. as for needing to stretch you might want to practice a little more lol just kiddin look after an 8 hour rehersal 2 hours off then a 2 hour concert it is easy to get stiff trust me on that. Ok well keep playing

It may be a matter of not stretching, but then it may also be bad posture. Make sure you are sitting up straight, but not uncomfortably. It`s hard to say without seeing it, so here are the stretches I do before a long practice/concert session.

Basically, I spend a lot of time on my shoulders. Take your right arm, put it straight out in front of you, palm up. Take your left hand, and grab the right elbow, and bring your entire right arm, keeping it straight, across your body. Repeat with the other arm.

Next, put your right arm straight up over your head, elbow bent, and grab that right elbow with your left hand. Put your right wrist and forearm behind your head, and touch your upper back with you right fingers. Lightly push straight back on your right elbow with your left hand.

Another one: Put both arms behind you, and connect your hands. LIGHTLY try to extend each arm to straight, and push up a tiny bit. Be careful with this one, it doesn`t take much force to get a great stretch, and it is very easy to overdo it.

I also do some slow and steady upper body twists (at the torso), and a little bit of neck stretches. Just remember, they are not supposed to hurt, so don`t do any of these with a fast or jerking motion. Always slow and steady.

Anything it takes to loosen up a bit. We spend all this time warming up our lips and face, we really should spend some more time on the rest of your bodies.

(These are really wierd to explain without a visual reference.)

if your wrist hurts it maybe due to one of 3 things or a combo of them.

1. Unbalanced horn - in fact im dealing with this right now. i took the valve section off my tenor and am playing a straight tenor now. but my horn is very bell heavy so i defintely need a countweight to balance this out and my wrists are feeling it big time.
2. Its just heavy. Sometimes we dont realize how heavy our horns are because we dont always have them up. you may want to considering working out to build up these muscles.
3. holding the horn wrong - i have a friend who has a freakishly ugly way of holding his horn and has trouble playing for large periods of time. its just bad the way he plays.

hope that helps