How to Sit at the Piano: Correct Posture, Hand Position and No More Wrist Pain

So anyone can take a car or a bike and you know put the accelerator on really fast but will you be in control over the vehicle for more than just 100 m without u you know unfortunately hitting something? Well the point I'm trying to make is speed with no control is worthless on the road and at the piano as well or at whichever instrument you play. So the main point of this lesson is to hopefully guide you to tick two very important boxes when your focus is on speed and all the glamorous stuff like arpeggios or you know licks or or phrases that you want to template across multiple keys. Number one, you need to be in control over it like I told you earlier. And number two, you need to play without pain. So generally speaking, if it's hurting you, you're you're not in control and you're going to inevitably give up. So these are a few things we are going to figure out in this talk. It'll be mostly piano, but a few things could apply to other instruments. So do stay tuned. Get your pianos out as well because you can check the posture as I'm going along with the lesson. We have done a lot of other posture lessons while playing chords, while ensuring staccato or while playing legato and so on and so forth. The other thing which will happen when you have proper posture in addition to no pain and lots of control will also be more musicality cuz inevitably the techniques I'm going to tell you will sound nicer for a chord perhaps as opposed to that method which is a bit more robotic I would I would imagine. So before we get started, do consider getting a study guide with all these points laid out on our Patreon channel. And don't forget to hit the like, share, subscribe button if you like the lesson. And do check out some of our other lessons as well on posture, piano technique, and lots of other specific topics like fills, runs, arpeggios, theory, ear training. And if you'd like, we have a website called free tutorials.nathanielschool.com Nathanielschool.com where every one of our YouTube lessons has been placed in very well ordered categories and filters and topics to choose from. So do check that out too. Okay, so let's get cracking. First off, it starts with I guess the shape of your hand when you play anything. You don't want your hand to be in a claw position like this. You don't want your wrist to drop down. You want your wrist to be parallel roughly to the piano and you want your fingers to be in a kind of a rounded position like you're holding a in like in a cuped palm position like you're holding a round object like a ball or an orange of sorts. But prior to doing this also ensure that the height that you set for both your keyboard and your stool or your chair that you're playing is ergonomic for you or works well for you. The way I like to do it is if I'm at the dining table and if I'm comfortable having my meal with I mean generally we use spoon fork or even our bare hands. The point I'm trying to make is if it's comfortable while eating why shouldn't that be the right height to play the piano? It should not be too high when you're eating food. Shouldn't be too low when you're eating food. Right? Otherwise your legs will hit the table. So with respect to the piano, what I like to do is if I keep it too low, then what happens is it hurts my back because I have to bend down too much. And if I keep it too high, it kind of hurts my wrist because my wrist has to do a lot more. So and also my shoulders get stiff. So I tend to like to keep this relaxed, you know, food eating position when I'm sitting. So you need to figure that out by adjusting your height of your desk or your piano stand. So these days we have keyboard stands that are very tactile. You can go in any height or you can if you don't have a keyboard stand or if your house doesn't support it. And if you do a lot of computer work or you if you have a laptop uh running most of the time, what you would consider is a small sitst stand desk which I generally find very useful for piano practice because the same thing that we do sitting we can easily do standing because at shows you see keyboardisters, pianists also stand and play and it's actually very easy to stand and play. It it's kind of the same thing same thing guitarists do, right? they sit or they stand. It's they manage. So why not have a sitst stand desk? That could work. And then you have all your cables attached to it and it it works well. So if you're interested, I can do a video of the setup I have here just to show you ergonomically how I've set it up for our studio. Let me know in the comments. So yeah, there's that. The other thing you want to focus on is the shoulder. The shoulder supports. It's a very strong part of the body. So the shoulder lifting on every note or the elbow moving this way, you know, is not going to really work out very well in the long run cuz you're going to lose dynamics. For example, if I take a chord and if I use the shoulder, immediately I'm losing control over the chord. Sometimes I'm hitting wrong notes because my action is gotten to be a lot more higher. So I like to keep the lift minimal. Okay. So what I tend to do now is what's left. If the shoulder is just anchored and my elbow is also fixed to my body, it's not here. It's here. The only thing left is this part of the hand. Right? Okay. Again, you could argue even the tricep to some level, but the forearm for you, if you want to play a chord softly. See, now the challenge when you use your shoulder is you might flam it or flutter it like this. But if you use your wrist with a light impact, it works out a lot better. and the wrist will control your fingers and the the forearm will provide power. So if you observe it's the same action to play loud legato staccato of course for stacato I tend to flick the chords a bit more cuz I need it to be choppy. So one way to do staccato is you lift your hand up. I I see some people doing it, but a more efficient way would be, I think, to flick your fingers back towards you. Sort of like you're trying to make a fist. There we go. 1 2 3 4. So, you see how the power is coming? The power can be less less volume or loud. So, how is that happening? I'm not slamming it extra with this part. It's always the forearm and the wrist. So, it's kind of like you're able to hit something really hard like maybe an annoying mosquito like this, you know. So, you can you can get a lot of impact, you know, or you can be very very calm, very light with it. Okay. So, I don't know how many of you play karate. I think this technique is followed in that in martial arts sports. So the forearm, wrist and fingers need to work together. And don't forget your back as well when you play the piano. You need to, my recommendation is to generally strengthen the back with exercises which you do behind the scenes. You could do it in a gym or you could do it in your bedroom or wherever it might be cuz you want to be able to sit without relaxing your back too much on a you know chair or wherever it might be cuz the back provides a lot of support for the whole body. It's also including the core muscles which need to keep the body stable while you play the piano even on stage. So you definitely need to try and figure out a way to get your back to be stronger and your shoulders to be stronger because if your back and shoulders the the the pivotal or the foundational parts of the ecosystem to play the piano are strong then you get a lot less pain in the weaker muscles the fingers and the forearms and the wrist especially. So now coming to the wrist the wrist should never be stiff. Don't stick your wrist in one position ever. So if you're taking a C minor chord, don't keep it always here. Maybe to take the same example. See what's happening to the wrist. It's going up and down. And it's also going in time with the song. So a floating wrist distributes or spreads the load across the whole arm and I think the fixed wrist will dump the whole load on the forearm. So that that's a problem. Okay. And when you play arpeggios, you should also again focus on moving the wrist, but maybe moving it not up and down, moving it sideways and creating small circles like this. So this is a circular wrist approach. Move your arm or the wrist circular but don't do this with your elbow. You don't need to overdo the elbow like this. And the proof is in the pudding. As you can see, you can play very fast without too much pain. I'm not saying there's zero pain. It is a job. But you can do this for a while and you can have control. 2 3 4 1 2 Control means you're able to count what you're doing. You're in time. You can even play soft or loud or loud and soft. Loud and soft. Same thing with chord. So, I think a a weird strange story at least. I've played a lot of these progressive rock songs with my bands. uh lot of complex phrases by bands like Dream Theater and the like. But for some reason there was this one song when I was in college which always had the problem of uh technique and it my hand was always hurting. It was hold the line by Toto. Great song. If you want me to teach it, let me know in the description. So you go. So I used to play the F sharp minor chord like this. You see the problem? There's a lot of tension. So what what I ended up doing was the up down things like this. So when I learned this it it was revolutionary. It was it it was amazing cuz I was applying this even for other genres like blues which were also hurting in my left hand. When you have to play without without the technique it's really painful but with it kind of works. So I'm moving it sometimes even inside and outside when I have to play white notes and black notes. Okay. So that's about the wrist in general when you're playing block chords. move it up and down or maybe inside outside if you're changing chord like this and it can be circular when you're playing an arpeggio. Okay. What happens when you're, you know, flying around the keyboard like this? The same story. But for this, the best uh thing to keep in mind is your elbow. Your elbow sweeps the piano. It it just does this. You can cover a good range actually just by keeping the elbow rooted here. So, it kind of just moves so much. It's not here or it's not here. So the the reason why the elbow is is fixed is so that the wrist doesn't keep turning or getting strained and your hand shouldn't turn in awkward directions. Also coming to what tends to generally hurt when you play piano. So you should be aware of this. One is the forearm. The forearm can definitely take a beating. So when that happens, you might want to actually take a break. Don't play for a while. But if you're on stage, you don't really have a choice. You have to go with the flow. So you have to take care such that the moment you're feeling the forearm uh pain kick in. You need to overdo those wrist techniques that I showed you earlier and also quick stretches which I'll come to. The other thing which can hurt is this part or this muscle near the thumb. Okay. Now this takes a beating if you play. So again stretching will help, warm up would help and also not overdoing it will will help. Okay, the muscle at the base of the thumb. Okay. And when it comes to speed, you need to always stick boxes prior to speed. Am I playing without pain? Am I in control over my piano? In other words, can I count what I'm playing? Basics. Do I know what I'm doing? Do I know what chord this is in the first place? Right? And is it musical? Most importantly, am I following the rules of the music? Am I accenting correctly? Am I playing with the right dynamics? Is there a volume contour that I'm following? And so on. So speed will come once you have ticked these boxes. Speed need not actually happen. Some songs don't need speed. But if you want speed, it needs to come only after you've ticked those crucial boxes. musicality, no pain and great timing and awareness. And the wrist, remember, as I've talked about, is yes, a very important part of moving, but you need to also keep in mind that your wrist is also musical. It's not just a mechanical thing. So when you bounce it, it actually sounds better as opposed to a monotonous volume or see that the bounce kind of sounds decent. And a point for those who have small hands, children in general or kids watching this, if you take a chord and you want to hit the octave, it's tough cuz your hands are small. So what you do is you use your wrist to give you slightly extra space to increase the kind of distance that you will cover. You can actually go about 1 and 1/2 odd in. So you if you if your limit is here you can increase your limit. So moving the wrist is very important even if you have small hands things like this. Okay. So most important thing before I sign off is to take care of your body while playing. uh understand whenever you're getting a strain take regular breaks and it's always good to yeah if you're pract if you're in practice mode let the practice be intense don't make the practice relaxed or calm but the in the intensity comes with a cost you'll you you are putting in a load or a physical effort to do this work so you should acknowledge that and just take some breaks along the way so also So prior to playing the piano, you might want to just stretch out your shoulders, do some wrist exercises. Wrist rotations could be very much helpful in both directions. I also like to stretch my thumb out. Okay, if you know any piano stretches or any tips for exercises, do let me know in the comments. I'm not a qualified physio at all but uh it's generally a few things I do which I've learned for music from musicians who play other instruments you know they definitely stuff for your forearms you can like I told you the wrist rotations you can also do some light forearm punches like this light punches obviously or side punches this tends to help uh sometimes I like to do the palm stretch But stand up and do it. It'll be helpful. And either in this direction or in the other direction. You could also or you should also do neck exercises or neck stretches. You should also do back stretches or back exercises. You should definitely do shoulder you know uh stretches to basically remove any kind of strain or tension that might happen. And if you have a repetitive pain, if if something is recurring, you need to meet a physio and invest in maybe meeting a physio at least, you know, once a week or once every two weeks or once a month even. And these things will really help. If not anything, just give you exercises and see if things are getting better. And playing the piano, remember, is a physical effort. It is a sport in a sense. There's a lot of physical effort going into actually hitting these skis and making music on the piano. The challenge being just like a sport because of the adrenaline and the creative juices that are flowing, you forget about your your body and taking care of it. So, it's always good to meet someone once a week or whenever you can and you know get things sorted out. I'd also recommend taking breaks mentally when you play the piano because whenever you don't get something, you tend to repeat it over and over and then over strain. But a simple hack would be just go to the balcony or maybe take a longer break and go out for a walk for about you know half an hour or whatever it might be. And when you come back, you you do the same exercise again. And it's much more playable because remember playing and achieving something on the instrument is not only physical, it's way more mental than physical if you ask me. And if you take this with entire pieces or connecting sections of a song with the next, having a good night's sleep is even more crucial. So that's about 8 hours or 9 hours before you last played. you you have no idea how good that'll be for your for your mind. Okay. So, it's mind and body, I I would imagine. So, this lesson hopefully covered a few pointers, if you will, on how to generally approach the piano from a physical and a slightly mental perspective. And I hope you found that useful. Watch our other lessons on posture and technique for chords, arpeggios, scales, and whatnot. It's all there on our YouTube channel. And if you'd like a more organized, structured course at Nathaniel, you can consider courses. The music method course being our flagship course, which you can learn either live or self-paced with pre-recorded uh lectures or customize it however you wish. Okay, cool. I'll catch you in the next one. Thanks for watching the lesson and do consider hitting the like, share, and the subscribe button. And don't forget to turn the bell as well for regular notifications. I will catch you in the next one.