Muscle failure as a practice goal?

[trpt2honk]

In athletics, muscle failure is a practice and workout goal. Should we musicians follow their lead?
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Mike Berry
Columbia, SC
trpt2honk@gmail.com

[JayKosta]

If goal is strictly 'muscle development', then sure.
If goal is 'good playing', then maybe not.

Maybe there are lots of YouTube vids of javelin, discus, hammer, high jump, long jump, pole vault. etc. training until 'muscle failure' ...
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Trumpet teaching is usually done with words and demonstration.
Learning to play trumpet is usually done by experimentation and practice.
If the teaching is good, it will lead to good experimentation.

[andybharms]

Definitely not. As soon as you start to feel fatigued in practice, take a break.
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Andrew Harms, DMA
Instructor of Trumpet, Colby College
2nd Trumpet, Vermont Symphony Orchestra
http://www.andrewbharms.com
https://www.instagram.com/andrewharmstrumpet

[hplpII]

I don't know of any musicians who achieved greatness by that method, but if there are it might be worth considering!

I can only think of poor Robert Schumann who ruined his hands with overtraining.

[bagmangood]

Also: there are only very specific times in athletic training that you'll want to actually go to muscle failure. In those cases it is not daily and it for strengthening a particular set of muscles, with exercises on the other days to balance out.
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More than one trumpet
A "few" mouthpieces

[Sforzando101]

Sometimes while I’m playing I experience significant muscle fatigue, but rarely muscle failure.

After a certain point, fatigue makes it tough to sound good, so I stop playing and rest. In performance, I plan things so that I don’t reach this level of fatigue, and practice enough so that I have sufficient endurance to do what needs to be done without fatigue being problematic.

Having said this, people have different goals, experience their bodies in different ways, and have different approaches to mastering the instrument.

YMMV.
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Sforzando101

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

[trpt2honk]

Maybe I should have posted this in embouchure area. When going through an embouchur change would muscle failure be helpful?
_________________
Mike Berry
Columbia, SC
trpt2honk@gmail.com

[abontrumpet]

[kehaulani]

^^^^
I was having chop problems and my teacher recommended I take several months off, let my muscles deteriorate, then build them back up. When I did, I was right back where I started. Didn't fix a thing. FWIW.
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Yamaha French Horn

[MrOlds]

It’s about learning balance and coordination. Tired lips don’t learn anything.

[Jaw04]

There is a time and place to really tax your chops. You need to figure out how to play and sometimes that can take a period of your life where you are practicing for many hours a day. With that being said, don't wear yourself out before a musical situation such as a rehearsal, performance, recording, etc. You want to ideally start each day feeling fresh, not destroyed from yesterday.

I do lift weights and try to take each set to failure. But what that means is that I can no longer complete a rep of bench press with the weight I have on the bar, it doesn't mean I can no longer move my arms when I'm done. You focus on a muscle group and then let it recover for at least 48 hours before you hit it again. You are tearing the muscle down and letting it heal. Can we apply that to trumpet playing? Maybe a little bit, for example follow a routine of a grueling day and then a light day, maybe. However if you are in school playing each day or playing professionally regularly, that approach doesn't work. When you have a lot of playing to do you can't be blowing your chops.

Furthermore, we are not really trying to grow muscles for the most part. The embouchure is not contracting, it's isometric. It's made up of some of the smallest muscles in the body. And what we are doing as brass players has more in common with a ballerina than a powerlifter. It's very delicate fine motor work, not 600 lb deadlifts.

You need to condition more like an athlete that has to perform every day at peak level, like an NBA player that has a game roughly every other day. They do some lifting and cardio during the season but most of their training happens in the off-season and they just stay in shape from playing basketball during the season, avoiding injury and getting plenty of rest. And sticking to a routine.

[huntman10]

No!!!!

Your goal in trumpet practice is to develop precision and control. You can challenge yourself to develop range, endurance, tone, volume, etc. But when you push to muscle failure, you cannot help but compromise good habits and precise playing. If I begin to lose my clarity and precision in my playing, I know it is time to do something else.
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huntman10 (TH and eBay)
Collector/Player of Fine (and not so fine) Brass Instruments including
Various Strads, Al Hirt Courtois, Schilkes,
Selmer 25, Getzen Eternas, Stomvi Pic, Lots of Eb Trumpets and Cornets Lots Olds!, Conns, etc.

[RJSREIN]

As both a longtime advanced trumpet player and a knowledgeable weightlifter all my life, there is one constant, rest. You work a muscle/ muscle group to a level of failure or fatigue, then proper rest is imperative. . HOWEVER, attention must be paid to small muscles not to strain to the point of damage. Your embouchure must be exercised but not to the point of straining it into a wet noodle. Planned practice sessions are important. Exactly what and for how long. Not so often or so long you’ve lost everything you’re working to accomplish; tonal quality/ clarity, flexibility,breathing dynamics, etc.
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long retired; collect and restore for self and others; hunt for others from pros to soccer moms for young students. always looking for interesting horns of all vintages as well as MP's and parts; especially Strad and Connstellation parts.

[stuartissimo]

Playing to fatigue is something I actively try to avoid, primarily because my technique starts to deteriorate when my muscles get tired. I don't want my brain to 'muscle-memorize' suboptimal playing, so I see little point in playing to the point of collapse.
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"...even in their mighty company I shall not now feel ashamed."
Olds Recording trumpet
Buescher flugelhorn
Compositions

[JayKosta]

[dstpt]

About ten years ago, I was playing 2nd Trumpet on Motown and asked the young lead player how he developed his high register. (He already had a solid DHD!). He said that toward the end of his 2nd year as an undergrad in college, he realized that the guys playing the top seats in the jazz band were going to graduate and that the director would quite likely be looking to him to fill the Lead seat. He wasn't sure what he was going to do, since he could only play up to a high C!

He decided to start practicing a lot of long tones, gradually moving into the upper register. He did this at the end of each day (evening), so he wouldn't be totally wasted before rehearsals or his weekly private lesson. He started on 4th space E, and played four bars of whole notes. (He may have tied the last two, which would have been similar to the Caruso Magic Six Notes.) As I recall, this would be at about quarter note = 80, so a moderate pace.

He would do those four bars on E, and rest for four bars, and he would do that same drill a total of four times on E. (This was 16 bars of actual playing but with 4 bars of rest between each 4 bars of playing. Hope that's clear.) Then, he'd move up chromatically to F and do the same, and then F#, and then G. He said the first night, he got to G, and his chops were totally burning (with lactic acid buildup), his tone was very shaky, and he just barely made it through the set on G.

He stayed on those four notes for maybe a week or so and would move past those notes chromatically on the night's he had enough strength to do so. Gradually, he would start a little higher (not on E, but on F, F#, G, and before too long, higher than that) and continue as far as he could, eventually getting above high C. He may have only generally done a set of four different notes in a single session with occasionally doing a 5th or 6th note. It's been ten years, so that's a little blurry.

I don't know how far he made it by the end of the summer before his junior year, but he did play Lead the next two years and went on to UNT as a graduate student and played Lead in the One O'Clock Lab Band for a semester before leaving to play Split Lead in the Glenn Miller Orchestra. He now plays Lead in many settings locally.
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To the OP: Is this the kind of thing you were thinking of doing?

[stuartissimo]

[ConMoto9]

If fatigue is causing you to sound lousy, stop and rest.

Hit it again in a bit. There’s always tomorrow, too.
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ConMoto9

[spitvalve]

When I was young and stupid my chops were always tired, stiff, and sometimes sore at the end of the day. Then I worked on the staff at a weeklong summer jazz camp where Dominic Spera was the featured performer/clinician. I got a lesson with him early in the week; he pared my routine down to a few warm-up exercises and told me to quit practicing high notes so much.

At the end of the week I played with the staff big band and took a solo on "The Tiger of San Pedro," and I nailed high F's and G's like nobody's business. And this was after I had played a Dixieland trombone gig earlier in the day. At the end of the concert a couple of my high school private students approached Mr. Spera and said "what did you do to Bryan Fields?" He just smiled and said "I got him to relax."

We read of guys like Doc Severinsen practicing 6-8 hours a day, and we try to emulate that. When I was in high school and most of my college career I had my horn on my face 3-6 hours per day between ensembles and personal pratice, and when I started playing professionally I was still trying to practice three hours per day (doing the CG Systematic Approach) even when I was playing two shows a night. I would even practice after the gig sometimes because I was obsessed with getting my complete routine in, even if my chops were thrashed.

My lesson with Dom was a game-changer for me. As soon as I trimmed my practice routine, I had more chops for rehearsals and gigs and life instantly became better.

The guys like Doc and Wayne and Arturo who do play 6-8 hours a day know to pace themselves and they have worked up to it gradually over many years of diligent and patient practice, with strict attention to correct fundamentals.

Blowing until our lips stop functioning completely is counterproductive. It took me a long time to learn that because I had been taught early on to take the weightlifing approach to practice. But that's really dumb when you're doing two shows a night. If you're performing and rehearsing a lot, your personal practice needs to be conservative.
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Bryan Fields
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More horns than my wife knows I have...

[ConMoto9]

“ Blowing until our lips stop functioning completely is counterproductive.”

Yes. And I knew Dom, too.
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ConMoto9