Keeping fit to play the drums.

by Rob Gordon at http://www.learn-to-play-drums.com

Playing the drums in a very strenuous business.

You are using all 4 limbs and using those limbs to play a number of repetitive motions many many times.

Actually in a 4 min song at 120bpm playing a standard 8th note rock beat you hit your hi-hat 960 times, your snare, kick and 120 times.

In 30 mins jam session you can raise you heart beat to about 120-140 bpm and be sweating lots and lots.

So all in all, playing the drums places a lot of stress on your limbs, heart and lungs. The repetitive nature of a number of drumming movement also places you at more risk of some form of repetitive strain injury.

What can you do to help get or keep yourself fit for playing the drums and also very importantly stop yourself from injuring yourself from the repetitive motions.

Well for myself I try to do the following things to help keep fit to play the drums and not get an injury. I used to be a rugby player and there use to be a great quote that "playing was something you did when you weren't injured !!!"

Well thankfully drumming isn't quite as damaging as playing rugby!!

General fitness

As I say I used to play rugby and was lucky to have had a wife that introduced me to exercise to music many year ago.

I will digress here to say that doing excrete to music class like general aerobics and in particular Step are get ways to help your drumming why ?

Well in step classes you need to count the beat and also step music is dance music that fits generally fits 16 and 32 bar sections so it really helps you feel the various structures of a song, intro, verse, chorus, bridge, outro.

See my other drum lesson on song structures for more information here.

Well back to general fitness. I tend to train 3 to 4 times a week.

I do a 4 mile run, some general upper body weights, a step class and a swim.

I also ride a bike to and from work that is about 4 miles each day. As you can see I do a mix of stuff to stop myself getting bored and to keep it varied.

I also generally have one week off in four, just to give myself a rest. I guess you can do any type of exercise you like to like walking, swimming, biking etc to just increase your heart rate to about 120 bpm for about 20 mins 3 times a week.

Lastly remember doing some basic exercise not only helps you get fit for drumming but helps reduce your risk of dying from many illness and who wants to die early with all that drumming you need to do and enjoy!!!!

Warming up

As I have shown you playing the drum involves performing a lot of repetitive motions.

One key way to reduce the risk of it to warn up before you start to play hard and fast.

In almost all sports a period of 5 to 10 mins at the start is set aside to warm up.

The warm up is the process of increase the heart rate and hence the blood flow (that oxygen to the working muscles to help fuel there operation) and increase the warmth of the muscles.

This makes them more flexible and less prone to injury.

Well its just the same with drumming and for your fingers, hands. wrists and arms. Stretching Once you have warmed up now is the time to stretch.

I like to stretch my fingers, wrists and arms.

Stretch them so you can feel the muscles and tendons start to pull. BUT NOT TOO HARD. Just to a point of mild discomfort.

Hold for 10 seconds and then let go. Do this 2 or 3 times.

Specific exercises to increase drumming endurance

A lot of drum instruction books include exercises for drumming endurance.

Well they are relying on the common physical law that states the more you exercise a muscle the larger and stronger it will get and an increased capacity for work will be achieved before fatigue occurs.

All this means is that by doing drum exercises in excess of what you face in a playing situation you will have more stamina than you need to play.

Common stamina exercises include:

1) Taking a basic rudiment say a single stroke roll setting a metronome to 100 BPM and then to play it for 5 minutes today and then 6 minutes tomorrow and then 7 minutes the day after etc. OK you might want to stop at 10 minutes !!!!.

Pretty boring well get a practice pad and do it whilst watching the television.

Alternatively use a pillow for no rebound and hence meaning you are having to work harder on the upstroke as there is no natural rebound.

2) You obviously can do the same for your feet. Also for feet I like to play 16th notes between my left and right feet. Again do this in front of the television. I, also, like to do this excercise when I am resting between weight lifting sets for the two minutes or so. This means I get two workouts my normal one and a drumming one, now what a good use of time!!

3) Start with a single stroke roll (RLRL) and play it through 50 times, now play a double stroke roll through 50 times, now play a triple (i.e. RRRLLL) stroke roll through 50 times, now play a quadruple (RRRRLLLL) stroke roll and on up to "10" stroke roll (RRRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLLLL)

This is very much the concept top athletes use in training more than they need too and thus have spare capacity.

A little point here is you might be asking apart form increasing my stamina what is the benefit for my drumming.

The answer is it will be easier to play more complex hi hat patterns with you right hand without getting tried.

For example single hand 16th note patterns on the hi-hat.

Moeller techniques

First up I am not an expert in Moeller. I have dabbled with it.

My understanding of Moeller is limited to various articles and a practical demonstration from Steve White.

Moeller is a sticking technique that was developed by Joseph Moeller.

My understanding of Moeller is that in playing one stroke you get two hits from that stroke because that stroke is broken into a down stroke and an up stroke The down stroke is achieved by relaxing the arm and dropping the arm down to strike the drum and in being relaxed the stick will bounce naturally off the drum head..

Next to play the upstroke lift the wrist up but keep you wrist joint and hand relaxed. This will cause your hand and stick to move down and so hit the drum as your wraist is moving up..

So in one motion of stroking you have achieved two strokes with a relaxed feel and reduced muscle power.

As I say I'm not a expert here but I have been practising this with some benefit.

I tend to think of the upstroke as exactly that an upstroke with my wrist, so I focus on my wrist moving upwards as a stroke. This then results in the stick hitting the head of the drum as a consequence of that.

At the very least it is a good exercise in keeping relaxed.

Play open

What is playing open?

Well playing open is where you use your left hand to play the hi-hat beat and your right hand to play the snare. Which if you are a right hand player is the opposite to playing the way you probably play now.

John Blackwell-Prince's drummer does this a lot mainly as he is two handed being both left and right handed.

This actually begs the question why do we play in this rather closed hand crossed way anyhow?

I understand the main reason is that as the drum set evolved in the 1920's from what were called traps, to sets with hi-hats.

The hi-hats worked with the left foot and so the right hand moved across to the hi hat to play it as the dominate/stronger hand required to and keep the driving part of the beat.

Well back to playing open.

The benefit is obviously in that you start to even out the number of strokes between the right and left hand.

Get some anti-vibration sticks.

Not much to say here but think about getting some anti-vibration sticks to reduce the vibration going back up the sticks into you arms from striking the drums. I would say this is important if you play an electronic kit with pads rather than mesh heads.

Rest and relaxation.

In any part of life you need to stop whatever it is and do something else to relax your mind and body so resting it and allowing your body to recover and repair itself.

Being an ex-sportsman a lot of sports training is based around cycles, training up to a level, maintaining those training loads and then reducing them and then upping the training levels again and hopefully moving up to a new level.

A key part of any training regime (if we think of our drumming in those terms) is rest and relaxation too to allow the body to recover.

Therefore in any "training regime" you need to build in rest and relaxation A last point (as I have mentioned in a number of my articles) on this is your mind and body need time to assimilate new technique, to me its like it needs time for the new technique to sink in and I found that "new" techniques start to become less hard after a period of time when I haven't played it.

IMPORTANT WORDS OF WARNING

Lastly, in any form of exercise if you start to experience acute sharp pains stop immediately.

I don't mean the mild discomfort of muscles working but nasty hard pain especially in your chest.

If you are drumming and your wrist start to hurt, stop and rest them.

Also, build up your endurance exercises over time, if you haven't played 5 mins of single stroke rolls before, start slowly, rest and then build up over time. This is to give your body time to adapt to the extra workload you are placing on it.

Also, if you have any difficulty breathing again stop and go and see your doctor.

Lastly, if you haven't done much exercise go and see your doctor first before starting just for a check up and get the OK to start again. I don't want any of you hurting yourself following this advice.

As always if you have any comments pls email me rob@learn-to-play-drums.com but please put the text "Not spam:" in your subject line first to help me sort the spam from your mail

Take Care and happy drumming

Regards

Rob