The Physical Flutist

On Tuesday Angela McCuiston posted about warming up:

As musicians (whether you be a flutist or not), we tend to be rather meticulous about our instruments and how we approach our practice time: warming up the smaller muscles of our embochures [sic], warming up our fingers with scales, even warming up our ears with long tones or our minds with imagery and planning the session out. But how much attention do we give to the rest of our bodies?

Very little, so I’m discovering.

Warming up your body is as important, if not MORE important than warming up our instruments, but it’s something we all to easily neglect.

One of my favorite flutists, Zara Lawler, has several entries about Physical Warmups on her blog The Practice Notebook:

Physical warm-ups not only prevent injury, they make your practice more efficient. If you start practicing without doing a warm-up first, your body is going to be trying to do two things at once: warming itself up to the task of playing and learning the new skill you are practicing. Eventually, you will probably accomplish both those tasks, but you’d be able to do it faster and easier if you did them one at a time. You can find my suggestions on physical warm-ups by clicking on “Physical Warm-ups” on the Categories tab...

I tend to practice standing up rather than sitting--unless I'm practicing with an ensemble. And sometimes, I even dance while practicing. In yesterday's International Herald Tribune, which I subscribe to on my Kindle, I ran across "Stand Up While You Read This":

It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death. In other words, irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, sitting for long periods is bad for you.

That probably explains, at least partially, why I feel better when I practice on a regular basis.

If we should be warming up physically before practicing, should we also be cooling down? There isn't a lot of scientific research on the effects of cooling down. Or warming up, for that matter. However, most of us know how our bodies feel before, during, and after practicing or exercising, so listen to your body and act accordingly.