Keeping Physically Healthy as a Musician

Jack Salter, 19, is a full-time student studying a professional musicianship in Guitar. Last year he had to defer from his uni course in order to tend to a wrist injury he obtained due to his guitar playing. With the injury being prevalent in his life, limiting what he could do, and having to stay away from his guitar for almost 10 months, Jack wants to let his fellow musicians know how to prevent this happening to them. Read it here with an exclusive Q+A entirely about his injury, how he got it, what it was, and how he got rid of it.

Jack Salter at Techfest

Keeping healthy physically isn’t something that most people get a chance to think about willingly - most performers will decide they need to start taking more care with themselves after they’ve already started to become injured/unhealthy. So, why not get ahead of the game? Learn how to stay healthy from the get-go and the warning signs to keep an eye out for from this Q+A with BIMM student, Jack Salter, who has plenty of experience in getting injured due to his musical hobbies.

How long have you been a musician for?

I don’t see myself as a musician, but I’ve been playing music since I was 11, so 8 years.

What made you want to be a musician?

I just really liked Slayer and that made me want to play music and then I found loads of other bands and new ways of playing music and I just kept going and going.

Was looking out for potential injuries or just having a conscious for keeping healthy

something you thought about before your injuries?

Not at all really, it wasn’t something I’d ever really heard of. I think I’d heard one case of it? But that was something outside of guitar that they then needed to rehabilitate their guitar playing due to the injury, whereas it’s the guitar playing itself that injured me.

Were there any warning signs early on that you may have looked over due to being undereducated on the risks of performing?

Oh, yeah. My wrists started to hurt in 2015 but it wasn’t until the end of 2018 until I was finally in long-term pain that stopped me from doing everything. It sort of came and went between 2015 and 2018 so I sort of looked over it and had no real idea why it was happening. I spoke to my guitar teacher about it and he said to rest, like loads of people do. So I did, and it would come back.

I would think ‘when even my guitar teacher and GP are both uneducated about the issue, it shows no one has been told on an industry scale how to look after themselves when playing guitar’.

What injuries have you obtained any injuries due to be a performer?

I have a type of repetitive strain injury where the cartilage in my elbows degenerated and playing guitar made it worse. It’s a tendinopathy of some kind and I got it in almost every single finger on both hands.

What are some other injuries that people typically get from guitar?

The most common one is Tendonitis (carpal tunnel) which is what my GP thought I had first. People who aren’t trained in specific muscle problems will just name everything as carpal tunnel, which will be true more often than not. Carpal tunnel I did know about, and did know how to prevent but mine wasn’t that in the end. My injury being labelled as that and people telling me to take more rest helped less in the end and elongated it.

How did you overcome them?

In about August, so 8 months after they first got to a point where I couldn’t play anymore, I could barely hold my phone or anything like that. I was on the NHS waiting list for physiotherapy but it was so long that I just said ‘fuck it, I can’t wait around anymore [after deferring from his University course due to his injuries]’ and shelled out the money for a good sports therapist. Within 5 minutes he had told me that I in fact didn’t have tendonitis or carpal tunnel, and then diagnosed me with what I actually have. I was with him for 45 minutes, did some treatments on my arms and elbows, then he gave me a rehab program to basically build up the collagen in my elbows and wrists that had degenerated (which I now have to fall back on every time my wrists hurt when playing guitar). He said that this sort of injury can be technique induced, so I’ve made a few strides to change that. For example, not engaging your elbow on your right arm helps a lot, and trying to keep your left wrist as straight as possible [as a right handed guitar player], which isn’t always possible, especially if you have small hands. But doing those things more often than not will keep you safe from injuries like that because although they’re reversible, it’s not the sort of thing you want to deal with at a professional level when your income relies on it.

Jack Salter playing at The Joiners

Was it easy to get past the injuries once you knew what they were?

Yeah, once I knew what they were it was fine because as a musician you’re used to doing things every day and you can put your mind to it, so when I was given the set of exercises and treatment and I had to them every day, that was simple enough. The rehab system that I have doesn’t actually take as long as the ones I’d found online for myself. There’s a really great book for people with carpal tunnel called ‘Conquering Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Other Repetitive Strain Injuries’ [by Sharon J. Butler] which lots of people have spoken to me about and is amazing for people who actually have that injury. So if you have that injury then definitely go and buy it, take the time off like everyone says but get that book and a high resistance stress ball, use those things because you want to get ahead of the injury and prevent it rather than cure it over a long period of time.

Do you think that you're injuries impacted you much?

As a player, now coming back to it, I’m much less capable than I was. After 3 months of playing every day I’m edging closer and closer to where I was but it’s still a massive set back. If I was in a professional situation it would mean that my livelihood had been affected and there’s a lot of jobs that they can’t take due to that injury. The everyday impacts was the worst side of it. With my particular type of injury, any small thing that my wrists had to do, even if it was just supporting my arm and holding my arm up, was too much and it would cause a lot of pain.

I was in wrist braces most of the time to try and get through the pain and I took some really strong anti-inflammatories on prescription (when we thought I had carpal tunnel) and these have had some side effects. I was doing all these things but there would still be some days where I couldn’t hold my phone without pain, I couldn’t cut food without pain.

At the time I was working at a supermarket so I was always lifting boxes and that wasn't good. In everyday life was the worst part of it.

What instruments do you play?

I play guitar and bass what I would say ‘full-time’. I can write for piano, but I wouldn’t put myself forward for it. I could probably be a backing vocalist, I do scream.

That could be seen as one of the more dangerous ‘instruments’ to play.

Yeah, done poorly it can be terrible for you. It’s like a fast track to injury. But lots of people do it without injury and have just learnt it through intuition or are taught it. Even then, people who are doing it really safely, tour for them is terrible. Doing it all the time is really tough on your voice, it would be like singing at your limits the whole time and it’s just terrible for people.

What measures do you take to keep healthy for performing now? (all instruments)

With guitar and bass, I do more of a warmup than I used to do, I do a lot of stretches in my fingers, wrists, and shoulders. When I’m not performing (like a day off) I’ll continue the rehab programme which is a gyroscope ball for my wrists, resistance bands, high-resistance stress balls. Vocally, when screaming, you should learn to sing first, finding out what type of singing feels safe and developing that technique first. Try not to eat to obvious foods and drinks on the day of performance. And always warm up with scale patterns and humming.

Do have any advice for performers wanting to stay physically healthy?

Don’t do anything that feels uncomfortable to do, because there’s a difference between something being difficult to play and something being bad for you. If you have any tensions in your wrists or arms or shoulder then that’s not a good thing. You’ve got to think ‘could I do an hour and a half set of music?’ and if the answer is no then you need to adjust your technique (ideally seen over by a tutor) or you should work on that piece or technique in little chunks. Another thing is to become aware of how your body feels when you’re playing and when you’re not playing, and figure out how your posture is affecting you. Be mindful of your posture and your muscles and how they’re doing and take the break before your body makes you take the break.