Arm pain

[Ubizmo]

I haven't posted in a while, but the short summary is: I started playing Anglo last October. I had a Rochelle 2 and then got a Minstrel with Wakker bellows and Jeffries layout, which felt like a very substantial improvement. But there has been one fairly serious problem. I have an injured distal biceps tendon. The injury was the result of lifting a dumbbell in the gym. This happened months before I started playing the concertina. I went to the doctor and also to a physical therapist, and while the pain did decrease a bit, it never went entirely away. I feel this pain mostly when my left arm is swinging inwards, toward my center axis.

 

As you can imagine, this impacts my playing. I use my left arm to move the bellows. When I start to play, there's not much pain, but as I keep playing it increases. I tried switching to using my right hand to move the bellows, but that still puts tension on my left arm, and the pain is still there. I called the PT again and was told, "Well, you're 70. Healing is a lot slower than it used to be, and your playing may be interfering with it." Right. If I play for an hour or so, I can still feel the increased pain the next morning.

 

If I stop playing altogether, how long might it take to heal completely? Hard to say, since this is a movement that is not rare in everyday life. I'm pretty careful not to stress that arm lifting things, but of course there are times when I forget. If I don't play at all, the pain diminishes but it never goes away completely. The doctor tells me I should consider playing a different instrument. Of course, I do play the whistle, which doesn't bother the arm at all. I enjoy the concertina, but I don't enjoy the pain, nor do I want to be constantly aggravating whatever the damage to my arm is. As of now, I haven't played for ten days or so. 

 

Well, I just felt like sharing that. I realize that pain issues can keep people from playing instruments. I know someone who can't play the flute anymore, due to shoulder issues. This stuff happens. I have grown fond of the fixed-reed sound. I suppose I could play the Melodica...

[Ken_Coles]

Time can be the hardest medicine. I lost all of 1999 to playing concertina when I got a fairly bad case of carpal tunnel inflammation. I did get back to playing and have done it ever since, with a lot of stretching to manage the condition. Good luck on your journey and juggling all the advice you'll get. People do come out the other side in many cases and get back to what they were doing.

 

Ken

[Alan Day]

You can reduce the amount of strain by playing very quietly.

Al

[John Wild]

Is it possible you can train your body so that your left arm does less work and your right arm becomes dominant in moving the bellows?

That may not be easy but may be worth a try.

Do you play standing or seated? If standing, perhaps consider playing seated with the left end resting on one knee.

[wunks]

14 hours ago, Ubizmo said:

 If I play for an hour or so, I can still feel the increased pain the next morning.

 

 

 

 

Playing for that long at a stretch, especially as a beginner,  is counterproductive at least for me.  Unless you're a cyborg your brain will be overwhelmed and stop processing after about 20 min. or so.  Roughly 20 min. every other day is optimum for my particular lump of grey matter.  With your sore arm I'd stop as soon as it starts to hurt.  Combine that with Alan's suggestion to play quietly to give both your brain and body a chance to recover.

[Michael Eskin]

As others have suggested, use a left inner thigh anchor and let your right arm do the majority of the work.

I also use a 9" pad of suede on my left thigh to further restrict the left side motion and allow the left arm to relax even more because it doesn't have do as much work actively anchoring the instrument.

The push is absorbed by the thigh and the left arm just has to counter the pull, there is very little work required and no lifting.

 

 

Edited February 25 by Michael Eskin

[Ubizmo]

I'm going to try to get used to controlling the bellows with my right hand, as some have suggested. And I'm taking some time off. As I said at in the original post, this injury was there for months before I ever picked up a concertina. I don't know exactly how long, but at least six months. It never goes away, although some days are worse than others. 

 

It never occurred to me that playing for an hour would be excessive. Generally, when I play I devote the first twenty minutes to working on something new, while I'm focused. Then I go back over things I've already learned and just enjoy them. And somewhere in there, I just improvise and explore the instrument, not trying to play anything specific. In any case, I don't play for an hour every day--not the concertina alone, anyway. I'm still trying to learn more tunes, and refresh old ones. For that I turn to the whistle. Unfortunately, I haven't been doing much with the sax.

 

I'll see how it goes. My goal was to be able to play the concertina in sessions. But even if I can't do that, I can still enjoy playing on my own.

[whelmplay]

I wish you good luck. I would like to talk to you. I feel you.

[Ubizmo]

On 2/27/2024 at 5:46 PM, whelmplay said:

I wish you good luck. I would like to talk to you. I feel you.

 

Happy to talk about it, and thanks. These are the kinds of problems I didn't have to think about not so many years ago. But I'm not complaining; plenty of people have worse.

[Randy Stein]

Have you tried acupuncture 

[Ubizmo]

On 3/3/2024 at 9:56 AM, Randy Stein said:

Have you tried acupuncture 

I have not. But I tried some ointment I found in the bathroom cabinet. Something called "EmuaidMAX." I think it's meant for surface skin conditions, but for whatever reason, it helped a lot. I just took a little dab and rubbed it into my where the biceps joins the elbow. It reduces the pain about 90 percent and lasts for hours. This makes a real difference.