Warm-ups, wrists and hearing: the boring guide that keeps you playing

Nothing in this guide will make you sound better this week. All of it decides whether you are still playing in ten years. Two things end drumming careers early and both are avoidable: hands that hurt, and hearing that has quietly gone.

This one is written in the site's voice rather than Brian's, and it is general practice, not medical advice. Anything that hurts, ringing that does not stop, numbness, or pain that wakes you up is a question for a doctor or a hearing professional, not for a drumming website.

Warming up: five minutes, not fifty

A warm-up is not a workout. The point is to get blood into your hands and forearms and to arrive at the kit already listening, rather than spending the first twenty minutes of every session being slightly bad.

A simple shape that works:

1. Away from the kit, one minute. Shake the hands out. Open and close the fists slowly. Roll the wrists in both directions, then the shoulders. Gentle, no stretching into pain.
2. Slow singles, two minutes. Alternating hands on a pad, a pillow, or your thigh, slower than feels useful. Watch the sticks rather than thinking about the count.
3. Quiet before loud, one minute. Play the same thing as softly as you can before you play it hard. Control at low volume is harder and it is where the technique actually is.
4. A groove you know, one minute. Something easy, at a comfortable tempo, all the way through.

Cold hands need longer. Playing outdoors in winter or in a cold room, double it.

Wrists, and the thing that quietly wrecks them

Almost all drumming hand trouble comes from the same root: squeezing. A tight grip stops the stick rebounding, so you compensate by pushing harder, so you grip harder, and the loop tightens until something aches.

What helps, in rough order of how much:

• Let the stick bounce. Loose enough to rebound, firm enough not to fly away. This is technique, not a tip, and it is the main thing a teacher can see and you cannot.
• Set the kit around your body. Drums and cymbals should come to you. If you are reaching up and across for a crash all night, your shoulder pays for it.
• Throne height. Roughly thighs level or angled slightly down, feet flat under the pedals. Too low is the common mistake and it puts the work in your lower back.
• Take breaks. Ten minutes off every hour is not lost practice; it is the reason you get a second hour.
• Stop when something is sharp. Dull tiredness after a long session is normal. Sharp, hot, tingling or one-sided pain is not, and playing through it is how a small problem becomes a long one.

Nobody on the internet, including us, can diagnose a wrist. If pain persists for more than a few days, or if you get pins and needles, see a professional who can look at it.

Hearing: the one you cannot undo

A drum kit is one of the loudest instruments you can sit inside, and cymbals put the worst of it a few feet from your ears. Hearing damage does not hurt while it is happening, which is exactly why drummers ignore it. It also does not come back.

Wear protection, every time, including practice. Practice is where most of your hours are, so practice is where most of the damage happens.

Roughly what your options do:

• Foam plugs. Cheap, effective, and they dull the high end so everything sounds muffled. Better than nothing by a wide margin.
• Filtered musicians' plugs. They lower the whole sound more evenly, so the kit still sounds like a kit. The off-the-shelf ones are inexpensive; custom-moulded ones are made by an audiologist.
• Isolation headphones. Block the kit and let you play along to music at a sane volume. Our favourite option for practice, because it solves two problems at once.
• Turning the music up instead. Not an option. If you cannot hear the track over the kit, block the kit.

Warning signs to take seriously: ringing after a session, a muffled feeling that lasts into the next day, having to ask people to repeat themselves, or trouble following a conversation in a loud room. Any of those is a reason to book a hearing test rather than to buy better plugs.

The unglamorous summary

Five minutes of warm-up. A loose grip. A kit set around you. Plugs in every single time. None of it is interesting, and it is the difference between a hobby you keep and one that quietly stops.

---

Get the next guide by email. One short email when the next guide is written, and the three ways to make a kit quieter to start you off: send me the tips.

Want somebody to watch your hands for an hour? Brian teaches in Austin, outdoors, and grip is the first thing a teacher fixes: book a first lesson.