I've been plagued by a number of injuries over the past month, which has required me to slow down. First is the herniated disk which is causing pain and tingling in my left hand, arm, shoulder, and neck. That hasn't really affected my cello playing but waking up with tingling in my fingers is not very much fun.
The second injury is a very sore right thumb. I think I was straining it with my bow hand, so over the past few weeks I've been playing much more lightly and I've modified my bow grip to relax my whole hand more, use my arm more for weight, and just played more lightly. I've also decreased my practice time (which drives me nuts), and have been icing my thumb after playing. It is slowly getting better, and has been a good reason to spend time working on vibrato.
The third injury is a pulled shoulder muscle from swimming. My husband the former swim coach tells me it's because I don't rotate enough. So the past week I've backed off from swimming very hard, focused on rotating, and have basically driven myself nuts taking it easy in the pool. I've forced myself to swim behind people I normally swim in front of, and to stay back and swim slowly behind people who I know are slower than me. Although I've had my share of amusement making them work really hard while I've been cruising at a slower speed than normal (they all know that I'm not working hard while they're busting their guts to stay with me) it's not been very much fun to swim slowly.
It's been really hard to pull back and take it easy, on my neck/arm/fingers, thumb, and shoulder. I want to accelerate the healing and the irony is that I need to change what I'm doing and rest each injury in order to let it heal.
My vibrato practice has been mostly practicing controlling the wobble to a metronome, very slowly. 2 wobbles per beat. 3 wobbles per beat. 4 wobbles per beat. It's very hard to keep consistent. I've also added trying to keep the wobbles steady while changing bow speed, and while shifting. It's been instructive to see where my vibrato falls apart, and to slow down to get it consistent and right. And, it's been driving me nuts go to slow. Unfortunately I've learned that in order to master a skill it's necessary to slow down before speeding up. So a few more weeks of 2 wobbles per beat, then 3 wobbles per beat,....
