Unexpected Lessons in Music through Knee Surgery Rehab
In February 2022, I had a freak accident where I completely tore the ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) in my left knee.
It was a slow recovery of a few months to heal from the initial injury, but after that came the surgery to reconstruct the ligament, enabling me to live normally in the future. My surgery happened in January of 2023. The rehabilitation process has gone quite well, thankfully. It also, unexpectedly, has taught me so much about learning music! The processes are actually quite similar (though at first glance may seem different ) because they both involve consistent, conscious exercises with increasing complexity to master precise movements.
At the time of writing this, it is 8 months after my reconstruction surgery, and I’ve learned a list of lessons I thought I’d share with you.
Consistency is key. This is obvious as a general concept, but less so until applied and you experience the progress in your own body. When I started out, I could barely lift my left leg. For 2 weeks, I would struggle through 10 simple, seated leg lifts, sometimes to the point of crying from the effort and pain. Then all of a sudden, sometime in the third week, I could get through those 10 leg lifts easily, in what felt like an overnight change. I couldn’t see the muscle forming underneath my skin, but it was. Slow consistent, effort is really the only way to learn anything. That leads me to my second point:
Mapping your progress is the best learning tool. I think as artists, we can shy away from a more typically “scientifically-minded” approach to gathering data, but keeping a log is a good way to keep yourself intimately familiar with your progress. It also keeps your mind mindful of and present in the tasks you are currently working on. This is especially important in injury prevention, particularly in the repetitive movements involved in playing a small string instrument.
Strength training is just a macro version of instrument playing. Strength training teaches you to use your big muscles, to tone and refine them and gain control over them. But ultimately, all it is is targeted exercises designed to increase both the physical strength of a muscle/muscle groups and the complexity of neural control over that muscle. The more you work on an exercise in strength training, the more the neural networks betwen the brain and muscle are strengthened and quickened, leading to precise control over that section of your body. This is exactly what you are doing when you practice, for example, a difficult shift in a passage of violin music. Through a controlled (and focused) amount of repetition of that task (i.e., the shift), a neural network is created to provide and maintain accuracy and mastery of the motion that executes the shift in question. It is a micro version because you are traiing much smaller muscles in your fingers and arm than, say, strength training of your quadriceps, but the principles is the same.
Broadly speaking, playing the violin is simply high-precision athletics (as was so profoundly put by my ELDOA teacher). This is not meant to diminish the extreme beauty, complexity, pure art, and je-ne-sais-quoi of the noble act of making music. Ultimately, of course making music is about creating art, music and connection; however, the specific way in which that art and connection is created is through precise, controlled movement. That’s also what the root of athletics involves: precise, controlled movement accomplished by intense, purposeful training. To effectively play the violin well - to be able to express all of the nuances, humanity, and emotional elements - you have to develop a complex and well-oiled neural network that gives you the extreme amount of control over your body parts necesssary to express that nuance.
So much so, in fact, that ultimately you want your instrument to feel like an extension of your body. Mastery of an instrument really begins when you feel so comfortable with it that it is an extension of yourself.
That requires specialized training through technical exercises, scales, bow arm coordination, open strings, double stops, left-hand isolations - you name it. This specialized training is also just a micro version of strength training. As mentioned before, I started out doing 10 leg lifts. Once I mastered that, I did my first squat (assisted). Then I did squats (unassisted) and calf raises. Then I did squats with weights and calf raises with a jump. I slowly started increasing the complexity and strength required of the exercises as I mastered the basics and developed muscle. It is the same with scales: you start out with an easy 2-octave scale in first position. Then you increase to an easy scale with one straightforward shift. Then you increase to 3-octave scales. Then you increase to 4-octave scales, also while incorporating speed into all of these variations.
Strength training in the gym to get your left knee back to functioning capacity is, of course, not quite the same as being able to play the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto flawlessly. While the ultimate goal might be different, however, the approach and the mindset is exactly the same.
And it is so motivating to see your progress!
Because the muscle groups are bigger and you’re dealing with bigger, more basic movements in general, it’s a lot easier to see your progress within 1 week of strength training vs. 1 week of violin playing. I could easily feel in my body how, after 1 week, it was slightly easier to walk without my crutches. This creates a positive feedback cycle that I certainly am taking into my violin practice, and is one that I hope I can inspire others to have too. The inner motivation and competency I feel to be able to execute and trust the very complicated tasks I have to do is amazing, whether it’s in a squat with a barbell or in a complicated fast passage in a violin work with many notes or chords.