the wonders of gen-eds

Gen-Eds: those supposedly useless subjects that you HAVE to do at UNSW for measly credit points... in order to broaden your minds.

Recently I've been able to shock and amaze people with my knowledge of physical fitness and health... thanks to the gen-ed I'm doing at the moment. Ask me about exercises for pregnant women and I can give you a 15 presentation on the benefits, precautions and examples of exercises! Just the other day... we were learning about dangerous exercises, which made me think about what sort of exercise violin playing does to you.

Today my violin lesson was a real workout. I had already been practicing for 3 hours before my lesson... then I had to walk to my teachers house... and play all my pieces for him. 2 of my pieces weren't doing too good... but I must say that I thought I did very well in my other two pieces. My Bach piece is 8 and a half minutes of constant allegro up and down arm movement. So so tiring. My other piece is all about strong bow grip and bow control... with added force. After learning about dangerous exercises... it makes me wonder about how much grinding of the elbow joing I'm doing while playing. It's not very natural for an arm to be in that position for 4 hours straight either. But maybe because I've been playing violin for years... my body is used to it. It's not hurting... so that's good.

Here are some interesting facts that you probably didn't know about violin playing:
-breathing at the right spots is as important for violin as it is for wind instruments.
-strong core is important. by just tightening your abdominals you can get a different sound out
-painting up and down strokes in karate kid is how your bow hand wrist should move while playing

hmmm I can't think of any more. except that scales are boring and I really should practice them more :P

From Car-O-Line