Physical exercises for old people

[Drop1]

I'd like to find some exercises I can use away from the bass to increase the resilience of my fretting hand.

I put the bass down for a few years and my hands are no where near what they used to be.
My plucking hand can still play almost indefinitely, but my fretting hand starts to complain after an hour or so and I have to stop. I've only been back playing 2 months and I know that's not long enough to resume where I was after such a long break. I'd just like to speed things up a bit , if possible.

I figured surely someone here has surely been in my position and needed/wanted to quickly build hand strength and stamina.

 

[bholder]

This is relevant to my interests.

 

[ProbablyTooLoud]

Sorta depends. on your age. If older, I'd focus on mobility and flexibility and let the strength come from playing.
Basic exercises from Chinese Chi Kung (or Qigong) are like magic for joint health, especially fingers, wrists, and elbows.

 

[albertus]

there are some devices that allow you to exercise your finger strength, but the normal result in the use of those is a tendinitis, so I wouldn't recommend any of that.
so my advice is also to be patient and let the playing do its job. avoid fatigue and never reach pain

 

[Zooberwerx]

In my case, it’s pulling the foil lid off the cat food tray at 5 AM & 5 PM.

Riis

 

[Drop1]

there are some devices that allow you to exercise your finger strength, but the normal result in the use of those is a tendinitis, so I wouldn't recommend any of that.
so my advice is also to be patient and let the playing do its job. avoid fatigue and never reach pain

I have been stretching a LOT. I already deal with tendinitis if i push too hard so anything that would exacerbate that I wouldn't be a fan of. I'll just keep playing. I'd like to get back I'm the studio sooner than later for the extra income, but I can feel I'm already on the edge of my current limits. I could likely use a few days of rest honestly. That's hard to make myself do, but it's nearly impossible to gain strength later in life without proper rest.

 

[5StringBlues]

The 10 meter sprint to the bathroom at 5AM while your legs are cramping up is always a fun 1.

 

[Yonni]

I had an appointment with a specialist today about my achilles tendonitis. He basically said that making sudden changes in routine will aggravate it. Mild stretching building up slowly over time (3-6 months) is the way to go. The strength will come back but pushing too fast too soon may bring you other problems. Tendons like routine, so find a practice pattern that works without adding stress to the tendon.

 

[Derek Kay]

Squeeze a ball?

 

[JonathanPDX]

The first step should be going to an experienced teacher who can evaluate your technique and posture. You may also look at your instrument setup, strings, and settings to see if you can make it easier to play with less effort. My strings are so light and low that I can play with just the left hand and produce clear, loud notes.

After all that, if you are still having pain issues, I'd take your bass and strap to an OT and let them evaluate your posture and angles to see exactly where the problem lies. They may have solutions when they can see exactly what you are doing to your body when you play.

It could be that increased stress and exercise will set you back and cause more problems, rather than developing faster muscle/tendon strength like we could do when we were all younger and kids weren't skateboarding on our lawns.

 

[BazzaBass]

We can never recover the strength of youth. Getting old is about getting used to what we can do and forgetting about what we can’t do. Runners can be age graded. Pity we can’t do that for Bass players

 

[fearceol]

As well as gentle stretches before and after a practice session, I'd suggest doing the "rubber band" exercise for a couple of minutes before you play. Don't over do it...one or two minutes is plenty. As suggested on the video, increase the resistance of the band gradually.

Also...whatever you do...DONT... use one of those grip gadgets !!!

 

[Drop1]

I definitely don't need a grip device. Working construction and playing bass fir the better part of my life has definitely given me that old man grip people talk about. I'm sorta leaning to most of my fatigue being related to too much grip on the fretting hand. If I dont pay attention, I'll make my strings touch the fret board and not even realize I'm doing it. It doesn't feel like a heavy touch, but I know it is. Likely 10 times what I actually need to fret the notes. I spent hours yesterday forcing myself to fret at the extreme minimum.
I USED to have fine enough motor skills in my fretting hand where I'd use less pressure to create fret buzz for accents, but that isn't there anymore. I was getting pretty close yesterday, but nothing like it used to be. Those super fine motor skills are tough to get back.
I'm running though an exercise I used to do, which is to make every note I play buzz while keeping an absolutely super light hit with the plucking hand. I like this exercise because once you can make every note buzz by fretting it just right, it's very easy to make it happen only when you want to.

Some people use a low action and hard attack with the plucking hand for this and thats fine. I run my action clean . ~ 2.5mm. I don't Iike unintentional fret buzz.

 

[Sam Evans]

I love the qigong suggestion, I was going to say that. I agree that mobility and flexibility are as, if not more, important than "strength."

In general, the issue isn't really strength at all: your fingers are probably more than strong enough to press the string down to the fret. It's probably more endurance that's the issue. To that end, lots of gentle bass practice is going to be more effective than gadgets or strength exercises.

 

[ProbablyTooLoud]

I love the qigong suggestion, I was going to say that. I agree that mobility and flexibility are as, if not more, important than "strength."

In general, the issue isn't really strength at all: your fingers are probably more than strong enough to press the string down to the fret. It's probably more endurance that's the issue. To that end, lots of gentle bass practice is going to be more effective than gadgets or strength exercises.

As little as 10 mins a day works wonders.

 

[JRA]

Physical exercises for old people

I figured surely someone here has surely been in my position and needed/wanted to quickly build hand strength and stamina.

- you may be looking for the wrong solution = you're probably too strong already = you may need to lighten up!
- @JonathanPDX's suggestion for some lessons/evaluations by a good teacher could be life-changing for you!
- you need to search for ways to make the task(s) easier...not to recapture your youthful 'brute strength'!
- old musicians don't have to play as fast or as hard to achieve more with less --- experience rules!

exactly how old are you that you'd expect to do this "quickly?" TIA

 

[Drop1]

Physical exercises for old people


- you may be looking for the wrong solution = you're probably too strong already = you may need to lighten up!
- @JonathanPDX's suggestion for some lessons/evaluations by a good teacher could be life-changing for you!
- you need to search for ways to make the task(s) easier...not to recapture your youthful 'brute strength'!
- old musicians don't have to play as fast or as hard to achieve more with less --- experience rules!

exactly how old are you that you'd expect to do this "quickly?" TIA

I figured out the day after I made the original post I was Indeed playing too hard. I looked down at the strings and had my e pinned to the fret board at the 3rd fret. I mean literally touching the fret board. It didn't feel like I was pushing hard at all. Been trying to stop that since.

 

[Drop1]

I put in over 5 hours straight today. That's a big jump. My finger tips are a bit sore, but otherwise I'm good. Well at least till I wake up. If I have any issues that's when they wil present.

My stamina is coming back far faster than I anticipated. Yay.