Basic Athletic Training Principles

Muscles are Muscles

As both a trumpet player and cyclist, I have studied training techniques in both disciplines for years, and have come to the conclusion that the basic concepts of exercise physiology apply as well to Trumpet as they do to Cycling. The following terminology is very familiar to serious cyclists, but is equally applicable to trumpet playing (and is kind of fun to know!).

To be clear: you don’t have to be Superman to be an outstanding trumpet player, otherwise you would not see great players in their 60s, or slender young players that knock your socks off. Efficiency (proper technique) is more important than strength! However, all things being equal, strength matters. And the following concepts apply at all levels of playing.

Progressive Overload, Supercompensation, and Reversibility

Training is the process of regular practice in order to increase your performance and fitness. In order to increase fitness, you must gradually and steadily increase the amount of training you do; you must make your training plan progressively harder. This is called “progressive overload“.

In response to rest after training, your body first recovers, then becomes stronger than it was before. It over-compensates for the work you did. This effect is referred to as supercompensation.

If you don’t train, you will lose fitness. This is called “reversibility“. This does not mean you never rest; rest allows over-compensation. But every day you do not practice at all (and properly), you go backwards.

Frequency, then Duration, then Intensity

As a young player, or after a long period of no playing, it is best to focus on playing Frequently, at low intensity, for short durations, never fully exhausting the muscles. There are many exercises, such as breathing, lip and mouthpiece buzzing, long tones and pedal tones, tonguing and fingering exercises, that build proper embouchure, technique and agility without overly taxing the muscles. Focus on perfect posture, hand position, embouchure, and technique. This will begin building a base of endurance on which you can later build strength.

Next, increase the Duration of your sessions, and of the exercises you do within each session, again at relatively low intensity levels. If you have been practicing properly, these should also seem almost frustratingly easy. You might even notice that you have begun practicing longer without realizing it. This is a good sign that you are developing a solid endurance base.

Finally, add Intensity. When it comes to trumpet playing, intensity typically means higher and louder, but also longer and/or more difficult phrases without significant rest. Lip flexibilities and lip trills, two-octave (or more) scales and arpeggios, and challenging solo or orchestral passages fall into this category.

As a beginner, try limiting yourself at first to 10 minutes of playing at a time. The first session will be just warmups: breathing, mouthpiece and long tones. The next might start again with a few long tones, but then move to lip flexibilities. Then, the third session may consist primarily of fingering and tonguing drills, the fourth on musical material, etc. At each session, play until you just begin to feel tired, but before you develop poor embouchure or excessive tension.

Soon, you will find that your warmup can include range extension into the pedal and high register, and take 15-30 minutes. Each successive session may also last 20-60 minutes. The great Maurice Andre claimed that his routine was to practice the first 20 minutes of every hour. I attended two of his solo recital performances, in which he played extremely difficult material in the high range, beautifully, and never missed a note. So it works!

Pace yourself, and you will find you are always ready to play well.

Load

Load is the amount of stress you are placing on your muscles. It can be roughly calculated as:

Load = Intensity x Duration

For example, practicing easy exercises (Intensity Level 1) for a long time (e.g. 30 minutes) creates the same Load on your muscles as practicing difficult exercises (Intensity Level 5) for a short time (e.g. 6 minutes).

Load builds up within a practice session, over a day of practice sessions, and even over the course of days of practicing and performing. Be aware of your playing load, and don’t over-do it. You should never practice to the point that you are losing proper embouchure, crushing your lips, or creating tension in your throat.

Of course, there will be difficult performances where you are forced to “over-do it”. Be aware of the consequences of these excessive loads, and take it easy for a day or two to let your muscles recover.

Fitness, Fatigue, and Form

Every day you practice, you increase your Fitness — your ability do work — to play longer and harder. Every day you fail to practice, you lose fitness. It really is that simple. Fitness develops slowly… over the course of months and years, but can be lost in a matter of weeks. This is why a regular, disciplined practice routine is so important.

In the short term, practicing puts a Load on your muscles, and they get tired — you develop Fatigue. Fatigue is your body’s response to work, so think of it as your friend — it means you did work!

Even if you have high fitness, if you are highly fatigued, you will not be able to perform at your best. Some fatigue is good (it means you’ve been practicing); too much can set you back.

Fatigue impacts your practice sessions, as well: If you are too fatigued, you will be unable to push your limits in ways that improve your strength. So it is important to give yourself proper time to recover from each practice session, in order to optimize the quality of the next session. And, of course, it is important to be well rested for performances, so you can be at the top of your game.

Form is your ability to do work NOW… to perform. Form is a combination of Fitness and Fatigue. You can think of Form as:

Form = Fitness – Fatigue

Fortunately, Fitness declines more slowly than Fatigue; fitness declines over a period of several days or even weeks, while fatigue diminishes in hours and days. So it is possible to achieve a high level of Form by backing off on your practicing — decreasing your overall practice Load — before a big performance, to allow your muscles to recover. For example, you might focus on pedal tones, fingering studies, and easy tonguing exercises on recovery days, and avoid lip flexibility studies and the high register. And don’t wear yourself out at a rehearsal on the day of a difficult concert!

Periodicity

Periodicity refers to the alternation between high- and low-intensity practice. This should happen on a weekly and daily basis, as well as within a single day or practice session. Rather than going hard every day, use your common sense to alternate between hard days and easy days to maximize the benefit of those days where you are pushing your limits. On rest days, you can work on low fingering exercises and easy etudes, to make sure you don’t lose fitness while you rest.

Once you have built a base, increasing duration and intensity should not progress in a straight line. It is better to gradually increase your work load for a few weeks — to push your limit — then take a light week, after which you start building again (starting at a higher initial level) for a few weeks, and again take a rest week. After a particularly difficult performance, take a few easy days. At the end of several weeks or months of hard work, give yourself a break. Take a few weeks of easy playing and begin building again.

These principles apply to cycling, running, swimming, weight lifting…. and brass playing. They deliver optimum results in the shortest possible time.