Why Playing/Practicing with Pain is a Mistake

I’ve been reading and doing research from sources outside the realms of music and the Feldenkrais Method.® The world of sports has changed much in the past years and can offer some important insights for musicians. For example, one topic that seems to pop up frequently is the issue of pain.

In this article from the blog, “begin to dig:”  “Why Not “Train Through Pain”?
 http://www.begin2dig.com/2009/11/why-not-train-through-pain.html

The author asks:

Who needs to “work through the pain”? In a life and death situation, a person may need to work through the pain. The price of staying alive might be worth the potential long term cost of whatever damage is sustained.

And explains:

A workout in a gym is not the same (is it?) Getting in a few extra reps so as not to spoil a set and “working through the pain” may have untold consequences for no benefit. Seriously. Apparently we just don’t know what the consequences of even a seemingly trivial injury can be for cascading through our systems and causing other issues. Knowing that there may be significant consequences when we break ourselves, we may need to ask ourselves: when there’s pain, why not just stop and figure it out? why put our bodies at risk just to finish a set? who cares really, ultimately, if we get in 10 reps rather than 8? or 2? I think a lot of this just-work-through-it comes from most of us not knowing what pain really is or not having tools specifically to respond to it appropriately. So i’d like to offer a little bit about what pain is, and some simple but effective pain response strategies.

For musicians, this could mean we might think it vital to finish preparing a piece or certain passage even though something feels overly tired or hurt. Is it necessary to continue?

I ask the same question of myself and fellow musicians. If we’re experiencing pain while practicing, why don’t we stop and figure it out? If we’re playing through or with pain, we’re making a big mistake. Performing may be another story, it may be important to our livelihood (as musicians) to finish a performance in spite of pain. But we still must ask, “At what cost?”

Later in the article:

Pain becomes a clear action signal not necessarily to stop what we’re doing but to change what we’re doing (which sometimes does mean “stop” - temporarily) If we decide to go ahead with that lift anyway, when the body is pulling muscular firing power away from the site and sending up pain events to say this is not a happy thing, then we’re stressing our bodies out further which cranks up stressor chemicals, cortisol can get going and well, we’re well far away from an ideal environment for performance, right?

In summary, pain confuses our brain and stresses our bodies. If we continue to do this over and over, it gets more difficult to deal with the pain’s causes because they get obscured and the added stress inhibits the healing process. Plus, it keeps us from doing our best.

In the next post, I’ll go into more detail of why pain confuses the brain. Later, I’ll begin to discuss some ideas on how we can avoid pain in the first place.

In the mean time, be well and play well.