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Building Endurance, Breathing

"Endurance" is a controversial term in piano practice. This controversy

originates from the fact that piano playing requires control, not muscle
power, and many students have the wrong impression that they will not
acquire technique until they grow enough muscles. On the other hand, a
certain amount of endurance is necessary. This apparent contradiction can be
resolved by understanding exactly what is needed and how to get it.
Obviously, you can't play loud, grandiose passages without expending
energy. Big, strong, pianists can certainly produce more sound than small,
weak, pianists if they are equally skillful. And the stronger pianists can more
easily play "demanding" pieces. Every pianist has enough physical stamina to
play pieces at her/is level, simply because of the amount of practice that was
required to get there. Yet we know that endurance is a problem. The answer
lies in relaxation. When stamina becomes an issue, it is almost always caused
by excess tension.

One example of this is the LH octave tremolo in the first movement of

Beethoven's Pathetique. The only thing over 90% of the students need to do
is to eliminate stress; yet many students practice it for months with little
progress. The first mistake they make is to practice it too loud. This adds
extra stress and fatigue just when you can least afford it. Practice it softly,
just concentrating on eliminating stress, as explained in section III.3.b. In a
week or two, you will be playing as many tremolos as fast as you want. Now
start adding loudness and expression. Done! At this point, your physical
strength and endurance is not any different from what it was when you
started just a few weeks ago -- the main thing you did was to find the best
way to eliminate stress.

Playing demanding pieces requires about as much energy as a slow jog, at

about 4 miles per hour, with the brain requiring almost half the total energy.
Many youngsters cannot jog continuously for over one mile. Therefore, asking
youngsters to practice difficult passages continually for 20 minutes would
really strain their stamina because it would be about equivalent to jogging a
mile. Teachers and parents must be careful when youngsters start their piano
lessons, to limit practice times to under 15 minutes in the beginning until the
students gain sufficient stamina. Marathon runners have stamina, but they
are not muscular. You need to condition the body for stamina for piano, but
you don't need extra muscles.

Now there is a difference between piano playing and running a marathon

because of the need to condition the brain for stamina in addition to the
muscular conditioning. Therefore mindless practicing of exercises for stamina
does not work. The most efficient ways to gain stamina are to either play
finished pieces and make music, or to practice difficult sections HS
continuously. Again using the jogging comparison, it would be hard for most
students to practice difficult material continuously for more than a few hours
because 2 hours of practice would be equivalent to jogging 6 miles, which is a
terrific workout. Therefore, you will have to play some easy pieces between
the hard practice sessions. Concentrated practice sessions longer than a few
hours may not be that helpful until you are at an advanced level, when you
have developed sufficient "piano stamina". It is probably better to take a
break and restart practice after some rest. Clearly, hard piano practice is
strenuous work and serious practicing can put the student in good physical
shape. HS practice is most valuable in this regard because it allows one hand
to rest while the other works hard, allowing the pianist to work as hard as
s/he wants, 100% of the time, without injury or fatigue. Of course, in terms of
stamina, it is not difficult (if you have the time) to put in 6 or 8 hours of
practice a day by including a lot of mindless finger exercises. This is a process
of self-delusion in which the student thinks that just putting in the time will
get you there -- it will not. If anything, conditioning the brain is more
important than conditioning the muscles because, for most students, it is the
brain that needs more conditioning. Brain conditioning is especially important
for performing. Strenuous conditioning of the muscles will cause the body to
convert fast muscles to slow muscles (they have more endurance) -- this is
exactly what you do not want. Therefore, contrary to common belief, pianists
do not need more muscle; they need more nerve control and conversion of
slow to fast muscles see section III.7.1.

What is stamina? It is something that enables us to keep on playing without

getting tired. For long practice sessions of over several hours, pianists get
their second wind just as athletes do (especially marathoners). Therefore, if
you feel general fatigue, look for the second wind to kick in this conscious
knowledge of the second wind can make it kick in more reliably, especially
after you have experienced it several times so that you know what it feels
like. Therefore do not get into the habit of resting every time you feel tired if
there is a chance that you might be able to catch the second wind.

Can we identify any biological factors that control stamina? Knowing the

biological basis is the best way to understand stamina. In the absence of

specific bio-physical studies for pianists, we can only speculate. Clearly, we
need sufficient oxygen intake and adequate blood flow to the muscles,
certain organs, and the brain. The biggest factor influencing oxygen intake is
lung efficiency, and important components of that are breathing and posture.
This may be one reason why meditation, with emphasis on proper breathing
using the diaphragm, is so helpful. Use of only the rib muscles to breathe
over-utilizes one breathing apparatus and under-utilizes the diaphragm. The
resulting rapid pumping of the chest or exaggerated chest expansion can
interfere with piano playing because all of the piano playing muscles
eventually anchor near the center of the chest. Use of the diaphragm
interferes less with the playing motions. In addition, those who do not use the
diaphragm consciously can tense it when stress builds up during play, and
they will not even notice that the diaphragm is tense. By using both the ribs
and the diaphragm, and maintaining good posture, the lungs can be
expanded to their maximum volume with least effort and thereby take in the
maximum amount of oxygen.

The following breathing exercise can be extremely helpful, not only for piano,
but also for general well-being. Expand your chest, push your diaphragm
down (this will make your lower abdomen bulge out), raise the shoulders up
and towards your back, and take a deep breath; then exhale completely by
reversing the process. When taking a deep breath, complete exhalation is
more important than a full intake. Breathe through your throat, not through
the nose (the mouth can be open or closed). Most people will constrict the
nasal air passage if they try to suck air through the nose. Instead, relax your
nose muscles and suck air through the throat region close to the vocal chords
-- even with the mouth closed, this procedure will relax the nose muscles,
allowing more air to pass through the nose. If you had not taken deep breaths
for a long time, this breathing should cause hyper-ventilation -- you will feel
dizzy -- after one or two such exercises. Stop if you hyper-ventilate. Then
repeat this exercise at a later time; you should find that you can take more
breaths without hyper-ventilating. Repeat this exercise until you can take at
least 5 full breaths in succession without hyper-ventilating. Now, if you go to
the doctor's office and he checks you out with his stethoscope and asks you
to take a deep breath, you can do it without feeling dizzy! Breathing normally,
while playing something difficult, is an important element of relaxation.
Perform this exercise at least once every several months and incorporate it
into your normal breathing habit at and away from the piano.

Piano practice can be healthy or unhealthy depending on how you practice.

Many students forget to breathe while practicing difficult material; this bad
habit is unhealthy. It reduces oxygen flow to the brain when it needs it most,
resulting in apoxia and symptoms similar to sleep apnea (organ damage, high
blood pressure, etc.). The lack of oxygen will make musical and mental play
difficult, and make it impossible to increase mental stamina.

Other methods of increasing stamina are to increase the blood flow and to
increase the amount of blood in the body. In piano playing, extra blood flow is
needed in the brain as well as the playing mechanism; therefore, you should
fully and simultaneously exercise the muscles and the brain during practice.
This will cause the body to manufacture more blood, in response to the
higher demand for blood. Mindless repetitions of exercises, etc., are not
helpful in this respect because you can shut off the brain, thus reducing the
need for more blood. Practicing after a large meal also increases the blood
supply and conversely, resting after every meal will reduce stamina there is
a well-known Japanese saying that claims that you will turn into a cow if you
sleep after a meal. Since most people do not have enough blood to engage in
strenuous activity with a full stomach, your body will rebel by making you feel
terrible, but this is an expected reaction. Such activity must be conducted
within safe medical limits; for example you might initially experience
digestive problems or dizziness (which is probably the rationale behind the
belief that you should not exercise after a large meal). Once the body
manufactures the necessary extra blood, these problems will disappear.
Therefore, you should stay as active as you can after a meal, in order to
prevent anemia. Practicing immediately after a meal will require blood for
digestion, for the playing muscles, and for the brain, thus placing the greatest
demand on blood supply. Clearly, participation in sports, proper health, and
physical exercise are helpful for gaining stamina in piano playing.

In summary, beginners who have never touched a piano previously will need
to develop their stamina gradually because piano practice is strenuous work.
Parents must be careful about the practice time of very young beginners;
allow them to quit or take a rest when they get tired. Never allow a sick child
to practice piano, even easy pieces, because of the risk of aggravating the
illness and of brain damage. At any skill level, we all have more muscle than
we need to play the piano pieces at our level. Even professional pianists who
practice 6 hours every day don't end up looking like Popeye. Franz Liszt was
thin, not muscular. Thus acquiring technique and stamina is not a matter of
building muscle, but of learning how to relax and to use our energy properly.