If you've read part 1 and part 2 of this, you know that you need volume (aka some kind of burning) to really get better and break through plateaus. You'll know you've done a ton of volume when your hands just feel wrecked and it takes a day or two (that's your recovery period) to get back to full speed.
But I've occasionally heard people recommend against seeking out volume because it's "bad for your wrists."
This is complete broscience.
"Broscience" is a term used by bodybuilders for anecdotal facts that have been passed down from lifter to lifter and until they're seen as facts, even though they can be complete myths. If multiple successful bodybuilders do these things, they will be treated as true.
The concept of broscience can be extended to other domains. I've used 'momscience' to describe widely-discredited food myths like "eating eggs is bad for you." Broscience however is a unique phenomenon where men take a claim as true because it comes from other successful men, then fail to scrutinize it adequately and over time treat the claim as indisputable.
I've heard "bad for your wrists" from professional musicians of all kinds, none of whom have so much as looked at an exercise physiology textbook, nor even know what muscles they are using when they play their instrument. I mean, "wrists" in the context of playing a rhythm game is vague -- do you mean the wrist joints, or the extensor muscles, or the digit extensors specifically? Even if something was bad for the wrists, it's not going to be bad for every part of the wrist, unless you're making a claim like "stealing fruit from a food vendor in the Aladdin universe is bad for your wrists because your wrist will be chopped off." In that case, okay.
I only hear this line of reasoning among people who never have to stress their bodies in a physical way. This is important, because many people stress their wrists in ENORMOUSLY more demanding ways than by playing instruments.
Making the muscles in your arm that control your fingers stronger (which is what you're doing, even though you don't think of it as such) would if anything prevent damage over the long-term. By being stronger, they are more capable. Injury happens, usually, when your muscles are trying to do something they're not able to do -- such as when lifters don't train their rotator cuffs and try to bench huge amounts of weight. You're not going to become more injury prone by getting stronger. The very idea is inane.
High-volume playing (i.e. playing until your hands feel wrecked) is how you get better at the game long-term. You will either do this all at once (such as in a day's playing) or very very gradually, but you're going to have to apply higher degrees of volume over time either way. The only times I've broken through plateaus on 6-key, 7-key and so on was when I hammered my fingers with patterns that made my arms burn. Once I recovered, I was able to do much harder patterns. Rinse, repeat.
I've heard this shit from drummers too. When I used to play drums as a teenager, one instructor told me to minimize wrist movements because "it's bad for my wrists." In hindsight, he was extremely skinny and had clearly never done anything fitness-related in his life, nor did he have any physiology background. He was just repeating broscience he's heard from other people.
Try a counterfactual: if it were true that doing wrist stuff was bad for your wrists, grip athletes who wrist curl to train their grip would have injured their wrists a long time ago. The pinch grip medley uses more wrist muscle in one movement than you ever will by moving around drumsticks. And an average construction worker will put more stress on their wrists in one day's work than you will, ever, by pressing buttons on a keyboard.
I mean, think about this from an evolutionary perspective. You're telling me that our forearms are that easily fucked over? That a collection of some of the most resilient and adaptable muscles in our bodies can be injured by hard stepmania files? That the muscles that are literally responsible for our superior tool use and ensuring the survival of our species are so weak that playing an instrument with slightly different technique is going to send those muscles crashing to their knees? Get out of here.
We are a society that used to fight wars with swords, which is indirectly fighting with our wrists. Unless your wrists were already seriously vulnerable to begin with, you will not harm them by pressing any combination of buttons too much. So unless you have wrists made of jello, don't worry about it.
But I've occasionally heard people recommend against seeking out volume because it's "bad for your wrists."
This is complete broscience.
"Broscience" is a term used by bodybuilders for anecdotal facts that have been passed down from lifter to lifter and until they're seen as facts, even though they can be complete myths. If multiple successful bodybuilders do these things, they will be treated as true.
The concept of broscience can be extended to other domains. I've used 'momscience' to describe widely-discredited food myths like "eating eggs is bad for you." Broscience however is a unique phenomenon where men take a claim as true because it comes from other successful men, then fail to scrutinize it adequately and over time treat the claim as indisputable.
I've heard "bad for your wrists" from professional musicians of all kinds, none of whom have so much as looked at an exercise physiology textbook, nor even know what muscles they are using when they play their instrument. I mean, "wrists" in the context of playing a rhythm game is vague -- do you mean the wrist joints, or the extensor muscles, or the digit extensors specifically? Even if something was bad for the wrists, it's not going to be bad for every part of the wrist, unless you're making a claim like "stealing fruit from a food vendor in the Aladdin universe is bad for your wrists because your wrist will be chopped off." In that case, okay.
I only hear this line of reasoning among people who never have to stress their bodies in a physical way. This is important, because many people stress their wrists in ENORMOUSLY more demanding ways than by playing instruments.
Making the muscles in your arm that control your fingers stronger (which is what you're doing, even though you don't think of it as such) would if anything prevent damage over the long-term. By being stronger, they are more capable. Injury happens, usually, when your muscles are trying to do something they're not able to do -- such as when lifters don't train their rotator cuffs and try to bench huge amounts of weight. You're not going to become more injury prone by getting stronger. The very idea is inane.
High-volume playing (i.e. playing until your hands feel wrecked) is how you get better at the game long-term. You will either do this all at once (such as in a day's playing) or very very gradually, but you're going to have to apply higher degrees of volume over time either way. The only times I've broken through plateaus on 6-key, 7-key and so on was when I hammered my fingers with patterns that made my arms burn. Once I recovered, I was able to do much harder patterns. Rinse, repeat.
I've heard this shit from drummers too. When I used to play drums as a teenager, one instructor told me to minimize wrist movements because "it's bad for my wrists." In hindsight, he was extremely skinny and had clearly never done anything fitness-related in his life, nor did he have any physiology background. He was just repeating broscience he's heard from other people.
Try a counterfactual: if it were true that doing wrist stuff was bad for your wrists, grip athletes who wrist curl to train their grip would have injured their wrists a long time ago. The pinch grip medley uses more wrist muscle in one movement than you ever will by moving around drumsticks. And an average construction worker will put more stress on their wrists in one day's work than you will, ever, by pressing buttons on a keyboard.
I mean, think about this from an evolutionary perspective. You're telling me that our forearms are that easily fucked over? That a collection of some of the most resilient and adaptable muscles in our bodies can be injured by hard stepmania files? That the muscles that are literally responsible for our superior tool use and ensuring the survival of our species are so weak that playing an instrument with slightly different technique is going to send those muscles crashing to their knees? Get out of here.
We are a society that used to fight wars with swords, which is indirectly fighting with our wrists. Unless your wrists were already seriously vulnerable to begin with, you will not harm them by pressing any combination of buttons too much. So unless you have wrists made of jello, don't worry about it.
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