Day 15

Today, I began troubleshooting why I've got the "tennis elbow." The main new variable was my faster bow speed. The bow change was also much faster, putting greater stress on my elbow's muscles/ligaments. Jerking the elbow up and down is not a natural motion. An additional factor was that when I decided "Not to practice," I went to my old patterns of mindlessly doing exercises the same way repeatedly, putting constant stress on precisely the same part of my body. When I was investigating the walkaround, I discovered that instead of "jerking” the elbow in the opposite direction, you could change its direction by involving the shoulder and the body's core muscles. I do not have to use my elbow at all if I want to at the bow change! And the change of direction in the shoulder is a much more natural motion than at the elbow. I could play a little today with these adjustments!

I wanted to continue my vibrato practice (I felt safer with slow bow speed). At the same time, I wanted to practice the third position, too, so I went through the first four exercises in Hanley " "Modern Violin School" book two. The book said, "Repeat each exercise ten times" I did not count, of course, but with my vibrato and slow tempo, it took about half an hour (with the breaks between playing them). I did not have any pain, but nevertheless, I did not want to risk my "tennis elbow" to return, so I stopped. Besides that, after 30 minutes of vibrato practice, my left hand was already tired:).

Grigory Kalinovsky's course "The Ergonomics of Violin Playing for the left hand" (yesterday I watched for the right hand) was also exciting and unorthodox. Vibrating while shifting is currently entirely out of reach for me, but I was surprised when I learned that Kalinovsky's main reason for that is not just to connect your vibrato through the shift but also to keep your hand relaxed when shifting. When I began to "vibrate," I did not know that I was doing a vibrato (kind of:)) ). I was shaking my hand to keep it relaxed (and I vaguely remember that all violinists do that while playing, I did not know why yet:) ). And Kalinovsky teaches vibrato essentially exactly the same way I was trying to do it. I think if you base your technique on the same principles (ergonomics and relaxation), you converge on similar technical execution:).