It's a myth that doing grip strengthening exercises will help with piano playing in most cases. It's not grip strength that is important, but rather being able to tense and release the forearm quickly when needed.
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Sometimes students ask me whether they need to do anything to “strengthen” their fingers for piano, or complain of having “weak” fingers. There are a number of myths about finger “strength” and piano, so I will try to dispel some of them here.
Fingers cannot be strengthened in the traditional muscular sense, because humans don’t actually have any muscles in our fingers. Pianists will develop stamina naturally over time without focusing on building “strong” fingers, but there are certain exercises that you can do to work on imbalances.
We have muscles surrounding our knuckles, and muscle at the base of our thumb, but no muscles in the actual fingers or thumbs themselves. For a more detailed look at anatomy as it relates to piano, check out Thomas Mark’s excellent book What Every Pianist Needs to Know about the Body.
Therefore “stamina” is more relevant than “strength”. Stamina can be developed by any piano playing that you may do, and you don’t necessarily need to specifically address it.
However, there are some good exercises that you can do if you do want to actively work on different elements of your technique, which I will discuss below. But first, some of the important traps to avoid:
Strength-Related Piano Mistakes
1) Finger Independence Exercises
There is an exercise out there where you hold certain fingers down firmly on the keys whilst trying to raise other fingers up high. I sometimes see this included in outdated piano teaching books. Please do not do this exercise. It can increase the likelihood of injury, and is counter-productive at best.
When fingers are holding down notes, it’s best for them to be resting lightly, as any further force won’t change the outcome of the sound. When fingers are not currently being used, they can be resting lightly on the surface of the keys. They don’t need a run up to play the next notes. Lifting fingers up extra high above the keys will only lead to tension in the forearms.
2) Finger Strengthening Exercises
If you are trying to increase the dynamics of your playing, working on your “finger strength” is not the way to go. Instead you can work on the speed of your fingers playing the keys (the faster you can get this, the louder the sound you can produce), rather than trying to force down the key with more “strength”.
Similarly, if you feel like your chords are too quiet, try to use the weight of your hand and arm, along with gravity being in your favour, to sink into the keys, rather than tensing up and forcing anything.
If your 4th or 5th fingers feel especially weak compared to your other fingers, this is completely normal! Try to think about sinking the weight of your hand and forearm through your 4th finger or 5th finger into the piano.
3) Wrist Strengthening Exercises
You don’t need to “strengthen your wrists” to improve your piano playing. The wrist needs to remain relaxed and flexible as much as possible. If you want to strengthen something, working on back and core strength and general day-to-day posture is a better way to go, as far as piano is concerned.
4) Grip Strengthening Exercises
It’s a myth that doing grip strengthening exercises will help with piano playing in most cases. It’s not grip strength that is important, but rather being able to tense and release the forearm quickly when needed.
A Better Approach
If you do want to actively work on your piano technique, here are some better options:
1) Focus on Releasing the Tension
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One of the best things you can do for your piano playing is work on getting rid of any excess tension that you may be holding. As a starting point, hold one of your forearms with your other hand. Try to relax all the muscle tone in your supported forearm, so that all of its weight is being taken by your other hand. This floppy, weighted feel is how we want to feel as much as possible whilst playing the piano.
2) Penelope Roskell’s “Hand Gym”
Penelope Roskell outlines a series of hand exercises in her new book The Complete Pianist that you can use if you really want to make sure your hands are in top shape for playing the piano.
For more info, check out Penelope Roskell’s book The Complete Pianist.
3) Hypermobility Exercises
If you have hypermobility in your fingers or thumbs i.e. some of your joints collapse/hyperextend, then you may benefit from a specific strengthening programme for this, and I would recommend seeing a physio. I have hypermobile thumbs and have really benefited from daily exercises for them.
4) Scales, Arpeggios and Studies
There isn’t a one size fits all route to learning the piano. Most people agree that learning scales and arpeggios in the beginning gives a good technical foundation, but aside from that, the benefits that you may get from doing specific finger exercises at the piano could be achieved just by playing more piano repertoire.
Even Czerny is quoted as saying:
I like to give my students some studies such as Burgmuller’s 25 Easy and Progressive Studies, often without telling them that they were written as studies, because they sound like beautiful little pieces in their own right, and are (hopefully) enjoyable to learn. I might only tell my students the “learning objectives” woven into them after they have learned them.
This allows them to develop technical skills without the same likelihood of boredom that is sometimes associated with exercises such as Hanon (more on this below).
Having piano lessons can be a great way to speed up your learning, because you get access to personalised, tailored feedback that you can’t get elsewhere . If you’re looking for a piano teacher, whether online or in-person, and are based in the UK, you can use my link to Tutorful to get a free £25 credit off your piano lessons here when you create an account.
Should You Practice Hanon Exercises?
Sometimes students ask me whether they should be learning Hanon’s famous 60 Exercises. I don’t think there is a simple “should” or “should not” answer. You can do well at piano with or without them.
The Hanon exercises can be good if you play the patterns with a relaxed technique, but can be damaging if played with tension. You can get all the same benefits of the Hanon exercises by playing more musical works that incorporate certain common patterns into the music instead.
If you do notice that you are finding a particular piano pattern difficult, then by all means work on a specific Hanon exercise, taking care to release any tension in your upper body.
If you do want to practice all of them, then I would suggest breaking your practice down into small chunks and taking regular breaks, instead of playing them all in a row over an hour, as Hanon seems to suggest.
You can also experiment with playing them in different keys, to make them a bit more useful to real life piano playing.
Take extra care to remain relaxed throughout – this finger-centric approach of playing the piano sometimes leads people to tense the rest of their upper body, if they incorrectly assume that it is only the fingers that are doing the work, rather than the entire body working as a unit.
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Definitely do not be tempted to raise individual fingers high above the keys, as discussed earlier.
The repetitive nature of the exercises often means that pianists “zone out” whilst playing them, disconnecting their focus from connecting with their body, and increasing the likelihood of becoming tense.
That is partly why there are anecdotal reports of people injuring themselves from over-practising these Hanon exercises. Indeed when I was in school I asked my teacher whether I should be playing the Hanon exercises, and, knowing I had a predisposition to piano-related injuries already, he advised me to avoid them completely.
If in doubt, there is so much piano repertoire out there that you can find more interesting pieces that will give you the same benefit as the Hanon exercises do.
I don’t give the Hanon exercises to my students, unless they specifically ask for them.
Does Playing Piano Change Your Hands?
Sometimes people think (or hope) that taking up playing the piano will make their fingers skinnier or their hands more muscly.
Playing the piano will not visibly change your hands. Taking up piano will not make your finger skinnier, because we cannot spot-reduce fat, nor will it make them more muscular, as humans don’t have any muscles in our fingers.
Even though we use our fingers a lot to play the piano, human fat loss isn’t impacted by the usage of particular areas of the body, i.e. we cannot spot-reduce fat (source). This means that, no matter how much piano we play, the only way for your fingers to get thinner is to lose body fat overall.
One temporary change that you might notice in your hands if you play the piano is that it is possible for the muscle at the base of the thumb to become tight, and limit the span of your hand.
If you massage this tight muscle, either with your other hand, or using a golf ball (or get a physiotherapist or massage therapist to do it) and gently stretch the area, this can give the appearance of slightly increasing the hand span.
This may contribute to why, anecdotally, some people report that their hand span increases when they start playing the piano.
But I would advise against trying to increase your hand span in itself. Pianists such as Schumann (if the stories are true) provide horrific case studies to discourage this.
To summarise, you can’t tell whether someone is a pianist or not, just by looking at their hands!
Do You Need Long Fingers to Play the Piano?
Another common myth is that you need long thin fingers in order to be able to play the piano well. This is not true either.
People with short, chubby fingers or small hands will not be at a real disadvantage compared to those with long fingers. Having small hands may mean having to work around or miss out certain big stretches, but it will not limit you in any meaningful way.
Join almost HALF A MILLION Happy Students Worldwide
Pianoforall is one of the most popular online piano courses online and has helped over 450,000 students around the world achieve their dream of playing beautiful piano for over a decade.
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