Keep Playing
You sat down to play, the way you have ten thousand times before, and your hand wouldn’t quite shape the chord. Underneath that small, stiff ache stirred a much larger fear—the one you never say aloud: what if I have to stop? Standard arthritis pamphlets give you foam squeeze-balls and generic finger bends designed for opening pickle jars, ignoring the subtle mechanics required to play an instrument. If you are a musician, losing hand function is not just an inconvenience—it threatens your creative identity, your emotional outlet, and your life's craft. Keep Playing: Hand Exercises to Outlast Arthritis at the Guitar, Piano, and Beyond by Rosalind Frey, OTR/L, is the specialized musician hand arthritis and occupational therapy guide engineered specifically to preserve artistic dexterity. Written by a licensed occupational therapist specializing in instrumentalist rehabilitation, this manual discards useless clinical exercises, replacing them with biomechanically sound drills mapped directly to instrument fretboards, keybeds, and fingerboards on how to manage hand osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis while continuing to play. Whether you play acoustic guitar, grand piano, violin, bass, or woodwinds, this guide equips you with the exact protocols needed to protect aging joints and play fluidly for years to come. Inside This Musician-Specific Hand Therapy Field Manual: • Deconstructing Musician Hand Arthritis: Understand the critical difference between osteoarthritis (wear and load) and rheumatoid arthritis (inflammatory immune response), and how targeted joint protection keeps cartilage healthy. • Defending the Four Core Playing Abilities: Span & Reach: Safe, non-damaging active stretches to preserve octave reaches on keyboards and multi-fret extensions on guitar necks. Strength & Pressure: Joint-safe isometric exercises to maintain clean string-fretting power and steady bow hold without joint collapse. Finger Independence: Precise motor-control drills to maintain isolated finger speed for trills, ornaments, arpeggios, and fast scale runs. Fine Dynamic Touch: Proprioceptive drills to safeguard the delicate tactile feedback and dynamic expression that turn technique into music. • The 5-Minute Pre-Performance Warm-Up: Thermal warming protocols and tendon-gliding sequences to lubricate synovial fluid and eliminate morning stiffness before touching your instrument. • Ergonomic Instrument Modifications: Practical, tone-preserving adjustments—lighter string gauges, lower action setups, key-weight modifications, padded picks, and strap angles—that drastically reduce joint torque. • Flare-Up Management Protocols: Step-by-step guidance on how to modify practice sessions, apply contrast baths, and rest acutely inflamed joints without losing your musical momentum. Who This Book Is For: This manual is engineered specifically for aging amateur players, semi-professional instrumentalists, music educators, and lifelong guitarists, pianists, string players, and multi-instrumentalists navigating osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, or early joint stiffness in their hands and wrists. An arthritis diagnosis is never a sentence of silence. With targeted occupational therapy drills and smart mechanical modifications, your hands have an extraordinary amount of music left in them. Keep Playing protects the craft that makes you who you are. Included within the book are references to printable pre-play warm-up cards, tendon-gliding exercise sheets, practice pacing trackers, and companion digital mobility routines optimized for at-home printing. Preserve your reach, protect your joints, and keep the music alive—for years and decades to come. Note: This educational workbook provides occupational therapy concepts, joint protection techniques, and adaptive movement strategies for musicians for informational purposes. It is intended to support, not replace, individualized medical diagnosis or clinical therapy. Consult a physician or certified hand therapist (CHT) to confirm your specific type of arthritis before starting.
Author: Rosalind Frey
