Do you ever get hand pain when you play the flute?

Instant Fix #6: How to Stop Hand Pain When Playing the Flute

If so, this video is for you!

If not, good for you! (But keep this video close in case you start to feel a painful twinge in one of your hands or arms.)

Quite simply, there are 4 main causes of HAND PAIN when you play the flute.

So I made a quick video to show you how to fix each one.

Jane xx

How to stop flute playing hand pain

In this video, I'm going to show you how to stop hand pain. When you play the flute, it's caused by four main things. And I'm going to take you through those four things in this video.

Flute School

I am Jane. My business is called The Flute Teachers School. I love teaching people exactly what they need to know to get an instant fix to their flute playing problems. That's my favourite thing about teaching the flute. I am Australian, which you might be able to tell.

Free flute mini course

I live in Sydney and stick around to the end of this short video because I'm gonna show you how to get access to a free course mini-course, called How to Quickly Improve Your Tone on the Flute. And it shows you just that - how to quickly, really quickly get a clearer sound on the flute.

Gripping the flute too hard

But now the four things to stop hand pain when you are playing. One cause of hand pain is that you are gripping the flute too hard when you play the flute. The good thing about letting go of your fingers is that you'll probably free up your fingers to move more freely and more quickly as well.

Tension in shoulders when playing flute

The second thing that can cause hand pain is much more common, much more profound, and has a much bigger impact if you can fix this. And if you have tightness or tension in your shoulders, it flows down your arms, into your hands and causes hand pain and arm pain and neck pain, by the way. Try and get your shoulders to feel more float when you play the flute. Use your arm muscles to keep your flute up and isolate your shoulder muscles and relax them. This will keep tension out of your shoulders, out of your arms and out of your hands and reduce that hand pain.

Right hand position when playing flute

The third thing that I'm going to show you is a specific hand position. That's pretty common, that causes pain. It's in your right hand. Basically, when you play the flute, you want things as untwisted as they can possibly be. So when this hand, the right hand comes onto the flute, you want it to be as straight and not bent like this. If you do anything bent, on repeat for hours, you're going to cause yourself long term injury and pain.

Untwist right hand

So the thing that a lot of flute players suffer from is their right hand doing this. And you can see, my fingers are bent across, my wrist is bent. Now, imagine doing something like that, I can already feel pain up here from doing that. So untwist it, it will probably mean that you need to bend your right hand little finger, which will feel weird at first. But if that's what helps you - untwist your right hand, it's gonna reduce that hand pain in your right hand.

Left hand position when playing flute

The fourth thing is in your left hand, this is another common hand position issue that people get. So when I play, have a look at my left hand. Some people are like this, and they've got this extreme angle here. So the way to know the right way to have your left hand is you want the flute resting in that squidgy part of your left index finger. And the weight will be on that squidgy part.

Some weight on left hand

If your hand is too far under, you're gonna have that angle. If your hand is not under enough, it's going to feel like you're gonna drop your flute. And you'll also be able to see that this is almost straight and it shouldn't be. So test out if you have the weight of your flute on that squidgy part. And it will probably mean that you've got your flute in a good enough position to start and at least reduce some of that left hand pain.

Hand pain relief

There are so many parts to having your hand position correct to reduce hand pain. And we don't have time to go through all of them in this short video, but they're the two most common ones. So they might affect you. And if they do, you're going to find some hand pain relief.

Free flute mini course

Okay, that free course I was talking about. It's called How to Quickly Improve your Tone at the Flute. There is a link to it in this video description. Go do it because it really does instantly improve the sound on your flute. Look forward to seeing you there. Bye.