Hello, I am new here and the reason why I joined this site is because I am kind of worried about a hand injury that I have that was caused by playing the piano.



So my story in short is that I started playing the piano really late, at the age of 13, 6 years ago. I joined music school just for fun but turns out I was improving really quickly and so my teachers started to push me to do more and more and I worked even harder. I started winning at local competitions and I finished grade 8 of ABRSM with distinction. This year I've been applying for university auditions and wanted to do my best so you can guess I was really working hard on that. I also joined many ensembles which added on the workload. However this injury started exactly last month when I had a series of concerts, one after the other which drove me to practice about 7 hours a day when I wasn't used to that (I usually practice 1 to maximum 3 hours a day). I didn't feel any pain during practice but the day after my last recital, I started to feel not pain but slight aches in both hands in the 4th and 5th fingers, thumb and wrist (that sometimes moved to my forearms). I realise that this was partially caused by me lifting up my shoulders whenever I wanted to play more expressively (I've been told by my teacher about this many times but I had no time to actually sit down, relax and fix this problem). Now ( 1 month later), after I've visited a specialist, had a medicine and a gel, iced and rested for about 4 days with the rest of the month practicing for no longer than 30 minutes with light touch and no tension and working on fixing any non necessary movements in technique, I feel a lot better. Sometimes I don't feel anything but I still get those random days where I can feel a very slight dull ache in my wrist and thumb. I really want to prepare for my program for the first year at university but I don't want to push myself so this injury wouldn't develop into something serious.



Has anyone had a similar experience? If so, what did you do about it that helped? And what would you suggest in general?



Thank you!

I'm no expert either medically or pianistically.

Do take it easy even if you have to delay or rethink your university options - better to cure this now or you risk having long term problems which might permanently prevent you from attaining your musicical aims.

I imagine the medical advice has been from your GP & a local hospital. I suggest contacting The British Association for Performing Arts Medicine - www.bapam.org.uk - who should be able to put you in touch which someone who specialises in this sort of problem, hopefully in your local area. Also a teacher of the Alexander technique, many of whom are musicians as well, can help greatly.

Good luck & I hope you get this sorted quickly.