Playing during chiropractic treatments

February 17, 2011 at 07:11 PM ·

Quak-o-practors are dangerous to your health.  Go to a real doctor and a real sports-medicine physical trainer. Oh, yes, there are some chiropractors in that business, too, (few and far between among all the quacky chiropractors) but all the "therapy" in the world will not make you better immediately. You have to:

1. determine what is injured and how

2. heal the injury

3. simultaneously begin rehabilitating the injury

4. Strengthen the injured part so that it can take the anticipated load without further injury.

Tendons are real trouble--they have low circulatory activity. They are slow to heal. If they are injured by "repetitive use" what that means in fact is that they were overloaded to the point of tearing (not actually overuse--note that!) and then not rested, rehabilitated and strengthened. Instead, you build a little bit of scar tissue, then re-tear, over and over. That is the repetitive overuse part--repetitively overusing an injured body part past its residual strength. It takes much longer to rehabilitate when you get to that point.

The key is DO NOT WORK THROUGH PAIN. Work UP TO but not BEYOND the pain threshold.

Whether you do this with ice, heat, stretching, isotonic exercise etc in traditional methods, or use crystals and incense and knuckle-crackling spinal adjustments, the only thing that will matter is how you are healing and re-strengthening the tendon.

By the way, you don't say *which* tendon in the left elbow. You need to know very specifically which one! For instance, it might be the pinky, or it might be the index finger etc. Pinkies are commonly injured because they take the largest gripping load. All the "therapy" in the world ain't worth squat unless you know exactly what is injured and needs repairing and strengthening.

February 18, 2011 at 06:56 PM ·

Tendon injuries are very different from muscle injuries.  With a muscle injury, sometimes other muscles can 'take the load' and allow the injured muscle to heal.  This is not possible with a tendon injury because the tendon is a 'single point of failure' with no backup.  Secondly, tendons heal very slowly - in months, rather than weeks. Often a tendon injury takes many months of healing and then therapy to restrengthen the tendon slowly without more damage.  Bottom line: you are at risk of waking up some morning with an aching elbow, which won't stop, and you will not be playing for many months. Then you will be in rehabilitation for both the tendon and your violin technique.  Take your situation very seriously.

If possible, find a person who deals with violin injuries.  Most large metropolitan areas have someone who does this.  Orchestra professionals usually know about these folks.  If this is not possible, find a very good sports medicine doctor.  Most importantly, find a teacher (or the violin injury person) who can figure out the muscle movements that are causing this un-due stress on your tendons while you play.  You need to re-work technique to stop the stress, otherwise, the damage will re-occur.