How much damage..... ?

[LaDanseuse]

I'm wondering how much damage flute playing can do to my fingers. I have very small hands, so I have a difficult time reaching the low C#, C, and B keys. These notes require that I stretch my pinky a lot. Now, my pinky is not very straight to begin with, but lately I've noticed that after I play, I manage to stretch my right pinky stick straight. Do I run the risk of over stretching and therefore possibly creating future pain and problems with this finger?

Thanks for any advice/help!

[omegasquarez]

I dont think that flute playing can damage your fingers... in my case, my fingers have grown at least 0.8cm since i started playing the flute 7 months ago. I think that you ahould use some chinese health balls for your finger prob.

[MeLizzard]

A less-than-ideal hand position plus lots of practicing can, over time, cause repetitive-motion type injuries. Turn your footjoint back toward your body a little bit, and try to keep your fingers arched rather than flat...

[mty957]

I started playing when I was 8 and now I am 33 and I can attest that the wrong finger placement definitely CAN and WILL damage your fingers. Now I do have a little disclaimer that I also type constantly in my job and have been doing that since age 18, but I knew I had messed up one of my fingers by high school, and I didn't even know I was doing it until it was too late. The pink finger on my left hand was a long reach for me as a small child and I kept it straight to reach my g#. Now, I have to be extremely conscious of what I am doing of my finger locks into place while I am playing, and then it will snap back and its really awful. I have to try very hard to hold it in a curved position. So please please please be very careful. There are times when I worry that I am going to eventually lose the ability to play. I already experience lots of pain and tingling in my hands. I went so far as to buy a new flute (back to an offset G) for me. It has helped so that the pain doesn't come as fast but after a couple hours of playing it's time to put it down. Before the new flute I was lucky if I could play 45 minutes before my hands locked up.

When I was in high school and would go into the elementary school to help out as a teachers aid, I was constantly showing them how to correctly hold their fingers. You just can't hold your pink fingers straight - or they will stay that way forever!

Jenni

[Caroline_Fluter]

Keep the thumb on your right hand really far back closer to the back side of the flute instead of directly on the bottom.. this will make it easier to keep the fingers on your right hand more curved and will seriously diminish the chances of health problems.

also this is kind of random, but do any of you guys who started out playing flute really young have differently developed bones in your left hand? Like, the space between the bone at the base of your index finger and the ball of your hand is wider in the place where you rest your flute? This has happened to me and it's kind of funny,

---caroline

[LaDanseuse]

Wow, mty.... I think I'm now terrified into having correct finger positions! Sometimes my hands do get sort of numb or very sore when I play for a long time or difficult passages. As I said, I have obscenely small hands, so playing flute without damaging my fingers is going to be something I really have to work on.

Thanks, people!

[ick27]

I think it's good to be very thoughtful about your hands as you play flute. There are lots of examples of people who have permanently hurt their hands or got dystonia (it's hard to say what causes dystonia, but it may involve playing through pain.)

When I play, if anything starts hurting or tingling I stop playing and gently stretch it out a little bit. If I'm still cramped or don't feel good in any way, I just quit practicing. Now I can play without any pain or discomfort, no matter how long I play because I've found what positions are the most comfortable for me, but if I ever feel any kind of at all I stop and try to figure out why..

When I began flute in 6th grade, my hands were small--I remember the incredible stretching that my right hand pinky had to do especially. If your hands are still growing, it may get easier to hold the flute in time, but for now, just take a break when you get hand cramps or tinglinng or whatnot.

Jenni: It may be that you have developed certain habits of how you hold the flute which cause you pain, not just that you damaged your hands as a kid (although you are the only one that can really say.) I would spend some time exploring different ways to hold the flute, maybe talk to your teacher or other experienced flutists about it. It is certainly hard to get in the habit of holding the flute differently if you've played for a long time. Is it your left hand that locks up, or do both hands have problems?

[mty957]

Oh, I'm sure that it's a bit of both. I know that I started out holding my hands wrong which caused the problem. I have to very consciously tell my self to hold my pinky on my left hand in a curved position. I can get my pinky finger on my right hand locked also, but I typically don't. I think that I originally had my foot joint on wrong when I was first starting so I stretched that finger but learned soon how to place it and now that finger is pretty comfortable. I played my first two years under a band teacher who was only half baked during school hours...then by the time I hit sixth grade I got an actual flute teacher. I don't think she ever corrected me on my hand position though. I started noticing my pinky locking up by high school and realized how I'd started it and started correcting it, but I just find it naturally going straight if I'm not constantly reminding myself. Now that I've actually talked it out with some people I will probably be even more aware of the problem and start sub-consciously fixing it instead of consciously. I don't doubt that my trouble is part damage and part bad hand placement. I do believe that bad hand placement will cause damage, though.

Here is a funny side note to my story...my first flute was actually someone else's garbage and the g# key was broken off and my parents didn't get it fixed until I'd been playing for nearly a year. The way I played a flat/g sharp was by lifting the key on the back side of my flute with my left thumb instead of my right pinky. Maybe when I actually started playing it correctly I was so uncomfortable with the "new" fingering that I over stressed the placement of my fingers and that developed into a habit without me even knowing it. I never thought about that until just now.

Regardless, my pinky is affected one way or the other but it'll be alright, especially since I am aware of what I am doing wrong and I know how to fix it. Thanks for your advice, though. It made me think!

Jenni

[Kendall]

It can certaintly cause permanant damage. I'm only a freshman in high school and due to bad pinky placement from 4th grade through 7th grade my pinky is permenantly crooked.

[tigerace]

I'm wondering how much damage flute playing can do to my fingers. I have very small hands, so I have a difficult time reaching the low C#, C, and B keys. These notes require that I stretch my pinky a lot. Now, my pinky is not very straight to begin with, but lately I've noticed that after I play, I manage to stretch my right pinky stick straight. Do I run the risk of over stretching and therefore possibly creating future pain and problems with this finger?

Thanks for any advice/help!

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[Amateur_Flautist]

Hehe, this is a bit random, but I was born with crooked pinkies (maybe because I'm double jointed in my hands) so I have no trouble reaching the keys at an arch and with no pain. Also, I do finger excercises before I play each day, so my fingers go back even more than they used to. Now I can get them at almost a right angle. I should take a picture of my hands; they freak people out. Okay, done with the randomness.