The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 139 How to Warm Up - Gear Up for Fall 22 Part 4

Episode Date: August 31, 2022

Welcome to Gear Up for Fall 22, a special series of five episodes that brings you everything you need to gear up for an amazing new season of music-making! We cover everything from setting goals to getting you set up for success by helping build your amazing practice regimen.   PART 4 – Warming Up In this episode, I share my favorite tips on how to create an effective warm up regimen. >> DOWNLOAD THE RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE HERE

You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast. This episode is part of Gear Up for Fall 22, a special five-episode series that brings you everything you need to gear up for an amazing new season of music making. Let's go. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger podcast, discussions on mindful music-making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now, your host, violinist, teacher, and high-performance coach for musicians, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I hope that this episode finds you doing amazingly well. welcome to gear up for fall 22 a special series of five episodes to help you gear up for an amazing new season of music making it's hard to believe but it's already september and that means that

season five of the mind over finger podcast is starting soon i'm so excited we begin september 9th and i have so much great content ahead for you this season wonderful guests lots of tips and tricks and tools to help you with everything related to your music making experience and a special workshop on October 14th. It's going to be an incredible journey together. So thank you for being here. And as I prepare for the 22-23 season as a podcast host, as a coach, and as a performer, I'm setting goals and getting organized. And I'm guessing that you might be in the same boat. You're getting ready to tackle all sorts of new projects and dreaming big for the months ahead. So I thought it would be great for us to revisit some of your favorite past episodes of

the podcast, where I discuss important foundational concepts, and I give you everything you need to get ready for an awesome season. So I've selected five episodes from the spring of 2021 that cover everything from setting goals to getting you set up for success by helping you build your amazing practice regimen. In the first episode of this Gear Up for Fall 22 series, we're going to get epically aligned for the months ahead. You're going to walk away with a renewed vision for the future, clear goals and specific strategies to implement, and the motivation to get started, and most importantly, to keep going. The second episode is all about planning and scheduling efficiently for better results. I share strategies on how to plan for productive practice and how to

schedule it in a way that maximizes your time so you can operate at the highest level possible. In the third episode, I share my favorite tips about a powerful ritual that can transform the results you get in the practice room priming. In the fourth episode, I share my favorite tips on how to create an effective warm-up regimen. And in the fifth and last episode of this series, I teach you how to create an efficient practice session breakdown. You're going to hear about the three basic qualities you want in a practice session, the mindsets to nurture to be productive in your work, and the general sections to include in a solid musical progression. So get comfortable, grab what you need to take some notes, and make sure to visit mindoverfinger.com

slash resources to download the various resources that come with the episodes, grab the episode transcripts, and to join the waitlist for the free fall workshop. All those links are also going to be in the show notes. All right, are you ready? Let's gear up for fall 22. Today we talk about warming up but I'm also going to expand that to include some aspect of the technique regimen as well because they're so intricately intertwined. For me warming up starts with the intention of easing the body into action gently but also efficiently. You know that I begin with priming because you listened to the previous episode of this series, so warming up is the natural unfolding of things for me.

Now, the thing with warm-up is that it can look like anything and everything. If you ask 50 different people, they'll swear by 50 different kinds of warm-up regimens. So what are we supposed to do? I'm going to start by saying this about warming up. whatever you do, you can't mess it up. I tell my clients this all the time. I mean, okay, maybe that's a little bit of a lie. If you grab your instrument or sit at the keyboard and just go mindlessly through the motions, then there's definitely room to mess a lot of things up and build up a whole bunch of bad habits and waste a bunch of time. But if you go in there,

you walk in the practice room with the intention of being mindful and present, you're paying attention, you're curious, and you have clarity of purpose, you can't mess it up. I think a good place to start is with priming. Again, catch episode 91 if you haven't already. And in your priming, ask yourself this question, what is my purpose in today's session? Once you have a clear idea of what you're going after, get playing. The second thing I want to say about warming up before I jump in the details is this. Please, please, please do not skip your warm-up. We have so much to do and we're in a hurry and it's so easy to feel like we need to jump into the action right away. But that's the best way to slow down your progress and even worse, get injured.

So whatever you do, make sure you get into the habit of warming up, of really making sure that all of your muscles, joints, ligaments, all of this is really ready for the work. Think long-term. Warming up is one of the best ways to anchor your progress and prevent injuries. What you're doing when you warm up is you're strengthening yourself and you will save time in your practice because the mechanics are going to be working at optimal level. One of my favorite quote is from Abraham Lincoln and he says, give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. If you work with me, you've heard this quote many times. It's so good. Now, I don't mean for you to spend four hours warming up and working on technique here. But you want to

spend some time making sure that all the mechanisms are good to go, all the muscles are warm, and you've maximized your body for efficient practice. I'll start by sharing with you what I like, then I'll add some suggestions. I have what I would call a modular routine. There are things I like to do when I first pick up the instrument and there are elements I want to cover, both in my warm-up and in my technique routine. The specifics might change from day to day, depending on what I have to do that day and how much time I have, but the modules tend to stay pretty much the same. I like to start with some slow and mindful long tones to gently open up my bow arm and open up my sound. This can look like open strings or long notes with vibrato, some Simon Fisher exercises.

There are so many options. Then I like to do some exercises to get my left hand going. And again, I have a long list of exercises that I like for this. Dexterity drills, shifting exercises, so many choices. And I'll usually start things slowly and build up to faster tempeh. By then, the warm-up portion morphs into more of a technique regimen. I have a scale and arpeggio cycle acceleration routine that I love to do. So if there's time, I'm definitely doing that. And in that cycle, I also throw in vibrato and bow exercises. After that, I like to do some double stops. For all of these modules or these elements of technique, I have multiple sources of drills and exercises. Of course, I have my favorites that I go back to often, but I try to keep it

engaging and stimulating by mixing things up. It can be the same routine and exercises for a few weeks, or it can change every day. It really depends on what's needed that day, that week, that month. What I love about creating a modular routine is that it's stable yet flexible. Stable because I cover all of the elements I think are essential for me to stay in shape, but it's flexible. So it keeps it interesting, motivating, and stimulating. Now here's a little reality check we rarely have the time to complete a perfect warm-up or technique regimen when that's the case there are many options ask yourself how you can best combine exercises to cover all the elements you want to address this is when we can get really creative an example of that is let's say

during a non-COVID years, an early morning orchestra rehearsal. If you have kids, you might have to get them ready for school. Then you might be stuck in traffic for a while and you get to work 20 minutes before rehearsal. There's a way to get warmed up in 20 minutes or less. Here's what I could try. One really slow scale with wide vibrato where I focus both on high tone quality production and loosening up the joints of my left hand. Then maybe I'll move on to a four octave scale where I speed up the tempo every octaves. Then maybe I'll do two octave arpeggios on one string, changing the speed and fingerings on each string. And if there's time, I'll pick a challenging passage from the orchestra part and go through that slowly a few times. Then see how I'm doing

a tempo, staying super mindful of my physical comfort. All of that could take about 10 to 15 minutes and I start the rehearsal feeling physically ready. So there are many ways to warm up in a short amount of time. As I said earlier, every single musician has a different approach to warming up. I strongly encourage you to spend some time researching what could work for you, experimenting. There are several great articles out there you can find with an easy Google search. And if you want to hear more about what some of the Mind Over Finger podcast artists do to warm up, you can catch the episode with Denise Tryon and with Leila Josifovic, and you can see how specific they are with their warmups. There's no magic formula to create the

perfect warm-up or technique regimen. And that's the beauty of it. Be mindful about it. Ask yourself questions. Look at your priorities. Explore. Experiment. Think of ways to make it personal, meaningful, and ultra-efficient. And guess what? It might work even better for you if you can figure out ways to enjoy everything about it. I'll say it again. If you're mindful about it. You can't mess it up. Don't be afraid to commit to a consistent routine or to explore and change it all the time. Whatever works for you. If you're not sure where to start, grab a piece of paper and make a list of the different aspects that you think would be good to cover before you launch yourself into active work. What physical elements might be beneficial to ease into?

Which parts of your body might require some attention and what drills would be particularly efficient at getting everything working optimally? What might be a good sequence of events for a warm-up or a technique regimen that would prepare you for solid practice? What elements of your technique do you want to work on short term and what do you want to build over time? Is there anything specifically related to a piece you're working on right now that you could insert in your technique regimen? Start asking yourself these questions. Find the answers. Then start thinking about specific exercises that target those areas of your body or your technique and build a menu of possible exercises, different options for all of those different elements.

you can even do like me I have so many different books and different photocopies of all sorts of stuff I've gotten from everywhere and I've compiled all of my favorite ones in one folder where I can easily access them at all times so if I have decision fatigue when it comes to picking an exercise I just go through my book and sure enough one will be calling my name so when it's time to practice, and you have a good idea of what your modular routine is, ask yourself, how much time do I have? What do I want to build for the long term? And what would best serve my needs today? What would prepare me for the work physically and mentally? What would ignite my interest? and how can I execute it in a way that is interesting, stimulating, and enjoyable for me?

Once you have those answers, start playing. And I would like to say this again about a warm-up and a practice regimen. You can truly make it enjoyable and interesting. warming up and working on your technique is truly for yourself a slow warm-up can at times feel like a meditation practice in some ways and practicing your technique is not just about going through the motions because you think you have to there's real comfort in knowing that every single note you play builds your skills and gives you more abilities to translate your emotions in your message into music. If you're present and you really make the effort to be engaged in your technical work, your progress will be more rapid and you will enjoy the process tremendously.

Now, as promised in the last episode of this series, I've prepared another visualization exercise for you. It's going to play here at the end of the episode, and I'm also making it available by itself for download if you'd like to be able to access it easily regularly. You can find that in the resources page of my website at mindoverfinger.com slash resources. In the priming episode, the exercise I shared with you is a very calming and centering one. And this time, I'm offering you one that can be helpful for those days where you feel like you need a little bit of a boost of energy before you start practicing. It combines some elements of the mindfulness practice I like, some pranayama, and a little bit of the centering up technique taught by Dr. Don

Green. And now let's get to our guided visualization exercise. So I invite you to settle in for a few moments. We're going to take some time to get grounded, get aligned, get energized, and get ready for the wonderful work ahead. So please come to a standing position, feeling comfortable with your feet hip-width apart, your arms hanging by your sides, your spine elongated, and your knees unlocked. Feel a gentle smile on your lips and let your gaze fall gently a couple of feet in front of you

and let your eyes be soft in focus. If that feels good to you, maybe sway gently left to right until you find a comfortable balance and you feel stable in your stance. and start to turn your awareness to the flow of your breath and start noticing it, noticing the inhales and the exhales, feeling the air going in and out of your nostrils,

feeling your ribcage expand and contract over each breath cycle and we're going to use this flow of breath to make this connection between our mind and our body very vivid remaining balanced on your feet bring your chin up slightly as though you're soaking in the sun and begin breathing more purposefully in a few seconds

we're going to begin inhaling fully through the nose for a count of two and pushing the air out through the mouth by bringing the navel towards the spine let's begin inhale through the nose for two exhale through the mouth for two feel your lungs for two exhale through the mouth for two contracting the belly in for two out for two

in and out continue breathing mindfully with a soft smile chin up soaking up the sun in for two out for two

continuing to breathe feel the energy rising up your spine and spreading throughout your body and still breathing feel positivity reaching every part of your body and continue breathing

with purpose in for two out through the mouth for two and letting your breath go back to a natural flow, in and out through the nose, maybe slowing it down a bit. Start visualizing yourself playing, feeling wonderful, with energy, with purpose. Imagine comfortable movements and efficiency.

Feel vitality spreading through you and imagine yourself enjoying immensely the experience of playing the instrument. And as you do that, be aware of your positive attitude, your curiosity, your ability to handle anything that comes your way in this session. smiling soaking in the sun imagine yourself solving problems with clarity and patience take one deep inhale

feeling positive energy and enthusiasm flowing up your spine and as you exhale fully release expectations and welcome the musical experience you're about to have in its entirety and there you have it

I hope this was helpful That's it for today, guys. Thanks for tuning in. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Gear Up for Fall 22 series. If this content was helpful for you, please share with everyone you think could benefit from it. Catch all five episodes of this special series. take a screenshot, share on social media, and tag me so we can keep the conversation going.

I'm Mind Over Finger everywhere. As always, I have all the information related to this episode in the show notes. You can find them via your podcast app or by visiting mindoverfinger.com, where you can also find more free resources on efficient practice and performance preparation and information on how to work with me. Don't forget to sign up for my newsletter to receive your free guide to a productive, mindful practice using the metronome,

transcripts from the Mind Over Finger podcast episodes delivered to your inbox, and much more. That's it for today. Again, thank you, and à bientôt. Thank you.