Don't Skip Leg Day

If you’re not the working-out type, don’t worry, this is not a post about weight lifting. The only thing you need to know about weightlifting is this: leg day sucks. Why? Because it’s not chest or arms day.

So why not just skip leg day? After all, when you ask a 5 year old to “show me your muscles”, they never turn around flex their hamstrings or their calves. So let’s make every day arm day!

The Problem

In the weightlifting world, regularly skipping leg day will turn you in to a top-heavy chicken-legged glory seeker (likely sporting a fresh fake tan). And it’s very noticeable. That’s why #friendsDontLetFriendsSkipLegDay.

What’s your Leg Day?

I’d be willing to bet that you have a “Leg Day” in your music practice. By that I mean, you probably have a skill or a set of skills that you hate working on. (If you have our app, take a look at which Modules you’ve practiced the least, or the least recently 🙂) Learning new pieces, playing through old easy pieces, or playing through all the scales you already know are all fun and give us that nice warm feeling that we know how to play our instrument.

But what about that piece that’s 85% complete and “all” that’s left are those couple, technical passages? Or those pesky minor scales? And have you been doing your ear training? (I don’t want to listen, I want to PLAY!)

Assess your leg day material

As you practice, try classifying certain things as “leg day” or not. Then take a look at that material — it probably falls into one of the following categories:

1. Stuff that’s boring.

2. Stuff that’s hard.

3. Stuff that’s both.

The Antidote to Leg Day

Fortunately, regardless of which of those categories your leg day material falls in to, there’s a tried-and-true remedy.

For the stuff that’s boring: make it less boring! This falls into the category of “Creative Practicing” that we’ll come back to very often in the future. Hate playing scales? Make them fun by playing every other note up an octave. Working on a particularly technical piece that you hate but your teacher is making you play? Take 10 minutes and play a few measures backwards, then get back to it. Or practice barefoot — or naked if you have to — whatever you have to do to spice it up.

For the stuff that’s hard: make it less hard! Slow it WAY down, or take it literally 2 notes at a time, or find some other way to make it easier. The best way to solve a hard problem is to split it up in to easier problems and then solve all of those. This has to do with “the fractal nature of goals”, which we’ll also talk lots more about in the future.

Warning

Watch out though, because leg day might just end up becoming your favorite day!