Music Vs. Sport: Who's tougher (INJURIES)

Music and Sport; Two of the most competitive career path one can take. It takes dedication, resilience and years of practicing/training to become the best in these fields. This really takes its toll on the body. Generally you would think that sport by its nature would be more taxing. However I’ve seen in recent times a phenomenal spike in the amount of injuries at my conservatoire. 

In the USA it was reported that in all of the 48 ICSOM orchestras (major orchestras in USA, such as LA Phil, NY Phil, Philadelphia) 76% of them had some kind of injury that’s severely affected their playing. I know what you’re thinking, sure this is a pretty large number for music related injuries but compared to sport it’s nothing. You see your favourite sports stars injured every week. It’s a huge factor in any sport and everyone talks about it but in music it’s almost taboo. I think it’s partly because of this mentality that musicians shouldn’t be injured because they don’t do anything but your day to day professional classical musician and they will tell you much differently. 

I think we have to really look at the quality of the injury because they are very different in sport than in music. In sport we use the muscles that we use every day. Usually all of the biggest muscles that have been working for us since the day we were born. In music it’s a much different story, we not only use much smaller and fragile muscles but we put more immediate pressure on the ligaments of the body. The parts the body that most of us would go through our life and never ever use. For example violinist and pianists use every kind of finger ligament, tendon and whatever other stuff is in there and of course the hand affects the arm, which in turn affects the and the neck affects the back. The sportsmen have the advantage of being able to train muscle into great strength however musicians have so much chance of using the wrong muscle because they are so small. When you use the wrong kind of muscle it can be catastrophic to ones performing career. 

So what can we do about it?

You look at sport and the injuries in the professional area are highly catered for. I mean people make careers out of conditioning the human body for sport. The problem that music has is that there is hardly any information out there about music related injuries. It’s not as if New York Philharmonic release to the media the players that are injured and might not be able to play. There really needs to be some more research but some exciting prospects are more appropriately sized instruments for younger musicians. It’s interesting because some research shows that the chronic injuries start when musicians are very young. Of course there are the old favorites like proper technique but I’m sure of those 76% of professional musicians with serious injuries 100% of them will have a perfect technique. 

When it comes down to it the real question we have to ask is “who’s tougher?” classical musicians or sportsmen. We hear of sport injuries every single week and sure they are usually more serious. However when do you ever hear a musician complain? Perhaps the injuries are there but musicians are just too proud and tough to admit it.