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Let's say you are going to the gym for the dreaded "leg day" workout session consisting of a 30-minute run and some resistance training that targets the lower body. When you get ready to start, do you jump right into the routine with cold muscles, or do you lightly jog and actively stretch before in preparation for the workload on your body?
Keeping this question in mind, advancing pianists are faced with many technically challenging solo works that are physically demanding and require mental fortitude; for instance, practicing or performing a late Beethoven sonata could be arguably comparable to a "leg day" routine at the gym. As we may have personally experienced, practicing advanced repertoire with cold, rigid fingers and a scrambled mind makes the accurate delivery of sound nearly impossible. Thus, some kind of preparatory warm-up is essential for a sound and actively engaging body. Pianists, though, often neglect a proper preparatory warm-up. I have seen piano students walk into the practice rooms and consistently jump straight onto the pianos with quick scales and arpeggios or technically challenging parts in repertoire. However, diving right into the warm-up on the piano keys poses a problem: are we truly warming up the entire body in a timely manner by starting with the fingers, one of our smaller muscle groups? It is true that we are warming our fingers up during scales or other technical exercises, but what about the neck, shoulders, torso or even legs? After all, playing piano involves the direct and continuous involvement of the whole body-not just our fingers and arms. We need to think of the bigger picture first and then move on to the smaller details during the warm-up, just like when learning repertoire.
The body must be prepared for the intricate, smaller and more coordinated movements required for effective piano playing. Therefore, we should give attention to all parts of our body even before sitting down on the bench and touching a single key on the piano. To include the whole body, there are three essential steps to a complete warm-up for all pianists: full-body warm-up, dynamic stretches and piano warm-up. By skipping the first two steps, we are missing out on greater flexibility in our muscles and joints, improved...