lifting weights

[wormtownpaul]

I have a good sense of rhythm and a good sense of coordination around the drums. However, I never get the speed I want, especially with my right hand on the hi hats. I'm a skinny guy, and have small arms. Would doing weight exercises to build up my forearms help, hurt, or have no effect on my speed?

Thanks

[GRUNTERSDAD]

Basically no affect. You can build up speed by practicing faster until your muscle/nervous systems become educated. Proprioception.

[Garvin]

On the flip side... I have been training with a body builder and can barely straighten my arms right now, much less move around the kit with any amount of facility. I imagine once I'm through this "breakdown" phase I'll have a little more strength, but I don't expect it to improve my speed, only my health.

[Mediocrefunkybeat]

Muscle mass has nothing to do with the speed at which you can move your arms.

Capiche.

[Bossa Nova]

I have a good sense of rhythm and a good sense of coordination around the drums. However, I never get the speed I want, especially with my right hand on the hi hats. I'm a skinny guy, and have small arms. Would doing weight exercises to build up my forearms help, hurt, or have no effect on my speed?

Thanks


Hitting the gym, practicing on pillows, etc. etc. is a big waste of time. Get out the practice pad and go to work.

[dairyairman]

i think it's a common misunderstanding that to play hard or fast you need to be strong. that's just not true. drumming is based on skill and to some extent endurance, but not strength.

i can tell you what's helped me play faster with my right hand on the hats, and that is learning to relax my grip and my forearm while playing. my drum teacher helped me with that. if you can loosen up, you'll find that you won't cramp up so much and you'll be able to play faster for longer periods. cramping or tightening up is a speed killer, and even a performance killer.

[nebula821]

You don't need muscle mass to increase your drumming speed, just train the particular muscles by practicing a lot. The speed WILL come eventually. There are some good drummers that are skinny as crap. Shannon Larkin of Godsmack comes to mind, very skinny dude.

[Norske]

I've been a weightlifter as long as I've been a drummer, and it makes no difference whatsoever, unless of course you want to have a cymbal breaking contest? LOL.

But seriously, what everyone else here is saying, speed and technique come with practice. Lots of it.

[ledzepjb]

use the search function, there should be a thread about this that was posted a while back...

[Ironcobra]

Yes and No, generally no it won't help you, but there is an exercise I do for drumming alone and it has helped me a lot. Tone your arms to get them nice a hard on the forearms. It has helped me so much, before i started it i was doing about 750 single strokes a minute on the drum o meter. now I'm up to about 950. And it's only been about 3 months.

But most of it is determined by birth, the ratio between fast and slow twitch muscle tissue. Not much you can do about it there. Just practice

[Adam]

I have a good sense of rhythm and a good sense of coordination around the drums. However, I never get the speed I want, especially with my right hand on the hi hats. I'm a skinny guy, and have small arms. Would doing weight exercises to build up my forearms help, hurt, or have no effect on my speed?

Thanks

I'm going to disagree with everyone. The more muscle mass you have the more muscle can be used for drumming. It's true, because I've studied and applied this for a long time.

Getting big won't make you fast, but what it will do is provide your body with more opportune muscle to use. When you lift heavy you stimulate your fast twitch muscle fibers (as apposed to your slow twitch muscle fibers when you do cardio/endurance). Fast twitch - power, strength, speed. Slow twitch - endurance.

So what lifting weights will do is actually (in theory, and if you apply it correctly) give you more explosive muscles. This means diddly-squat unless you transfer these muscles to drumming functionality. You still need to train your newly ravaged gym muscles to learn to drum, and the combo will (as it has for me) give you an explosive, powerful, fast movement around the drum set. Combo this with some regular cardio and you will see benefits with endurance.

The most important thing to remember is that no amount of weight training will make you a faster drummer unless you practice being a faster drummer. What it WILL do, if you use it to supliment your drumming, is help your body go beyond it's current bounds.

[King Of Drums]

Hitting the gym, practicing on pillows, etc. etc. is a big waste of time. Get out the practice pad and go to work. Tom Grosset the recent WFD champ said that he spent some time practicing on pillows. Buddy Rich also said he practiced on pillows and so has Dennis Chambers. So I guess they practiced something that was just a big waste of time... Darn i thought I could trust some of the fastest drummers who have ever lived... I guess not, I forgot that you know everything and are the world's greatest drummer.

[Gunn]

I have started lifting weights in the last 6 months. And No it does not help increase your speed. HOWEVER i used to cramp up sometimes while playing and this has not happened since i started using weights.

[GRUNTERSDAD]

I'm going to disagree with everyone. The more muscle mass you have the more muscle can be used for drumming. It's true, because I've studied and applied this for a long time.

Getting big won't make you fast, but what it will do is provide your body with more opportune muscle to use. When you lift heavy you stimulate your fast twitch muscle fibers (as apposed to your slow twitch muscle fibers when you do cardio/endurance). Fast twitch - power, strength, speed. Slow twitch - endurance.

So what lifting weights will do is actually (in theory, and if you apply it correctly) give you more explosive muscles. This means diddly-squat unless you transfer these muscles to drumming functionality. You still need to train your newly ravaged gym muscles to learn to drum, and the combo will (as it has for me) give you an explosive, powerful, fast movement around the drum set. Combo this with some regular cardio and you will see benefits with endurance.

The most important thing to remember is that no amount of weight training will make you a faster drummer unless you practice being a faster drummer. What it WILL do, if you use it to supliment your drumming, is help your body go beyond it's current bounds.


I think you disagreed with yourself. When you say it won't do diddly squat unless you transfer these muscles to drumming functionality. That only means, do what everyone else has been saying, and that is to practice. More muscle fibre may help with endurance but lifting weights per se will not help you with speed. Not too many people need explosive power around the drum set. The sticks are really not that heavy.

[abe]

I think you disagreed with yourself. When you say it won't do diddly squat unless you transfer these muscles to drumming functionality. That only means, do what everyone else has been saying, and that is to practice. More muscle fibre may help with endurance but lifting weights per se will not help you with speed. Not too many people need explosive power around the drum set. The sticks are really not that heavy.

Exactly, and if your muscles are getting to big, it will slow you down. You will be able to play with hammer or baseball bat faster then anyone but skinny guy with pair of sticks will beat you on drums.

[slingerland755]

Guys,
Lifting weights, cross training, and generally just keeping fit is a no-brainer. Let's just list a few of the benefits: Increased muscle mass, increased flexibility, increased energy, stronger joints and bones, increased stamina, reduced stress, increased HDL's, decreased LDL's, decreased triglycerides, fat loss, heightened self image, better sleep, better posture, and improved mental function etc... The list goes on and on.
You will make gains on your speed with practice, but I believe you will make faster gains if you supplement with a lttle weight training, stretching and general fitness.

[abe]

Guys,
Lifting weights, cross training, and generally just keeping fit is a no-brainer. Let's just list a few of the benefits: Increased muscle mass, increased flexibility, increased energy, stronger joints and bones, increased stamina, reduced stress, increased HDL's, decreased LDL's, decreased triglycerides, fat loss, heightened self image, better sleep, better posture, and improved mental function etc... The list goes on and on.
You will make gains on your speed with practice, but I believe you will make faster gains if you supplement with a lttle weight training, stretching and general fitness.

Yes it really helps. I do myself some strength exercises. But drummers should be carefull how much they do it. Just like long distance runner should be carefull not to get too bulky.

[aydee]

I love how dennis chambers practices... He just sits on an easy chair, with his eyes closed..

no kidding.

[slingerland755]

I love how dennis chambers practices... He just sits on an easy chair, with his eyes closed..

no kidding.

Dude,
You're in the wrong thread.

[tomgrosset]

Hey wormtownpaul,

Using weight exercises will enhance your lifestyle but it will not improve your technique. Using sticks and a pad (a pillow on some occasions) will give you excellent technique. I recommend practicing the exercises in Stick Control or The Rudiment Ritual. Practicing these fundamentals certainly make a difference.

-Tom

[Adam]

I think you disagreed with yourself. When you say it won't do diddly squat unless you transfer these muscles to drumming functionality. That only means, do what everyone else has been saying, and that is to practice. More muscle fibre may help with endurance but lifting weights per se will not help you with speed. Not too many people need explosive power around the drum set. The sticks are really not that heavy.

I did not disagree with myself, unless perhaps I mis-worded something. What I'm saying is that when you are limited physically, you are going to hit a ceiling in certain areas of drumming. If you need to play louder music (like I found myself having to play) it takes strength to play it. I used weights to give myself a greater capacity of strength, and applied my technique around that.

The same thing goes with developing explosive power around the kit. Running 5km a day and doing yoga isn't going to do that. Intense exercise will. Weights falls under that catagory. Not everyone is blessed with an abundance of fast-twitch muscle fibers, but weight lifting can help develop those that we have

[Adam]

Exactly, and if your muscles are getting to big, it will slow you down. You will be able to play with hammer or baseball bat faster then anyone but skinny guy with pair of sticks will beat you on drums.

That is such a misguided statement about our bodies. Man, look at sprinters and look at distance runners. I promise you that any Olympic sprinter trains with heavy weights (not to get "big" but to get strong) as well as sprinting, and they are generally quite muscular. Distance trainers rely on running huge distances for hours a day, and they are very very thin.

Now look who has more explosive power; Sprinters hands down. As drummers what do we want to develop? Well we kind of want a little of each (depending on our styles). Running as well as heavy weight training is beneficial. I've found that I do enough playing to develop endurance (though I still run a lot for good measure, but it's mostly sprinting or interval stuff), but when it comes to the heavy stuff weight training was only helpful. It helped me get faster and never slowed me down.

[GRUNTERSDAD]

The fast twitch muscle fibers are responsible for giving the athlete his speed, agility, quickness, and power. Fast twitch fibers are 10 times faster than slow fibers.

Isometric training, will isolate and condition your fast twitch muscle fibers and therefore increase your speed and quickness.



Isometrics using resistance bands is the ideal strategy for speed training. This is partly due to fact that the energy stored in a stretched band is much greater than gravitational energy used by weights. Therefore the faster acceleration of a stretched band is 'transferred' to the muscles when used with an isometric exercise.

The biggest advantage to isometric training is two fold.

First, by forcing your muscle(s) to hold a position for a certain length of time, your body will begin to recruit and activate more and more motor units to help maintain this contraction. Motor units that are rarely exercised within a particular muscle are now brought into use, perhaps for the first time.

Second, the motor units that are recruited are forced to contract continuously, time after time, with no appreciable decrease in force output. This allows your muscles to achieve a state of maximum contraction very safely and effectively.

The end result is that the entire muscle matures very quickly.

Following this method or reasoning, Isometric excercise would be much more beneficial to drummers than weight lifting. Fast twitch muscles do not have the endurance of slow twitch, so this speed is soon lost and the slow twitch take over if you are playing any rudiment or drum routine or song for any given time.

[tomgrosset]

Look, it's not rocket science. Practice using your sticks. Seriously. If you guys start practicing with weights then you're just asking for trouble.

[jazzin']

Look, it's not rocket science. Practice using your sticks. Seriously. If you guys start practicing with weights then you're just asking for trouble.

This is just what I was about to say.

Weights?! Drumsticks weigh...what? 50 grams or something? Everyone, and I mean everyone, is plenty strong enough to get really fast. More muscle mass won't help. Everyone already has enough for drumming. You just need to practice with good technique and do a lot of it. Weights will help you with nothing related to drumming, apart from maybe a general sense of fitness and overall health. Even this though will not in the slightest help you with getting faster. To get fast you need to get clean, precise technique and endurance and you will get fast.

Here's some Zen for you: 'Practicing to get fast will make you fast. Weights will not.'

[mattsmith]

I think I get what Adam's trying to say, in that he correctly believes that weight training hones the body in such a way that one is in a general way able to exceed previous limitations. In other words overall fitness helps push limits. No argument there.

However, there's a problem with this in regards to hands. You don't play games with those carpal muscles. If you want to get fast with your hands, you isolate only the part of the hand you need and concentrate on that. You do that by stretching the selected muscles and relaxing them several times, do the light isometrics that Gruntersdad correctly mentions, relax again, and leave everything else on the hand alone. The sprinter analogy doesn't work here. The hand is unique to itself.

You want to get faster, you build your endurance by playing single strokes at slow to medium speeds for extended intervals. Tom and I both use the pillow because it has it place and it does help. You just don't obsess on it for hours on end. When you have endurance then you have the tissue development required for safe practice at fast speeds. Using hand weights doesn't isolate. It bulks up the whole hand which will slow you down big time, and that's what will happen if you use weights.

Don't use them.

Look you can argue with Tom and me about Afro Cuban Groove, Dave Grohl, anything else, but not this.

[Jeff Almeyda]

Look, it's not rocket science. Practice using your sticks. Seriously. If you guys start practicing with weights then you're just asking for trouble.

Tom is right in that lifting weights will not improve your drumometer scores or technique.

A general fitness program will help you with other things such as strengthening your shoulders abs and hip flexors so that you can get around the kit easily and not feel like your shoulder is going to fall off or your low back is crunched into a knot after 3 hours.

In other words, use drum exercises to help the drum specific stuff and use other exercises to strengthen the support systems for those muscles.

If you look at the type of drummers that advocate fitness programs (Donati, Mangini, Lang etc) they tend to be the guys that play more "athletically". When you've got all limbs flying around, it helps to have a certain level of strength endurance and flexibility that resistance training can provide.

The problem is, nobody likes to do the exercises that actually help drumming. Bench presses and curls are NOT what you need. You need lots of ab and low back work, hamstrings and shoulders (especially rotator cuff) are also crucial. Flexibility is just as important.

Your forearms will get plenty of work from real drum practice. Do NOT do curls or forearm exercises. They will not get you faster. They will tighten you up. The bodybuilding "pump" is the enemy of drumming.

[mattsmith]

Tom is right in that lifting weights will not improve your drumometer scores or technique.

A general fitness program will help you with other things such as strengthening your shoulders abs and hip flexors so that you can get around the kit easily and not feel like your shoulder is going to fall off or your low back is crunched into a knot after 3 hours.

In other words, use drum exercises to help the drum specific stuff and use other exercises to strengthen the support systems for those muscles.

If you look at the type of drummers that advocate fitness programs (Donati, Mangini, Lang etc) they tend to be the guys that play more "athletically". When you've got all limbs flying around, it helps to have a certain level of strength endurance and flexibility that resistance training can provide.

The problem is, nobody likes to do the exercises that actually help drumming. Bench presses and curls are NOT what you need. You need lots of ab and low back work, hamstrings and shoulders (especially rotator cuff) are also crucial. Flexibility is just as important.

Your forearms will get plenty of work from real drum practice. Do NOT do curls or forearm exercises. They will not get you faster. They will tighten you up. The bodybuilding "pump" is the enemy of drumming.

This is it exactly Jeff. But you always kinda know where these talks are going when they first start. Guys are trying to find shortcuts and they don't exist. Sometimes you feel like they're not really listening to this other stuff. They just want to buy a couple of ten pound weights and acheive perfect happiness. And then they think if they can only do this 4 hours a day for a month then...

Now I don't say this of everyone, and I do get what Adam was trying to say, but all that doesn't always apply to this one specialized practice. Besides, this hand speed stuff is so fleeting anyway. Last year after I stopped really practicing it I stayed exactly where I was. If I keep doing this just working on music stuff, I'd probably start getting a lot slower if I didn't have the endurance techniques down. Those little muscles are always hungry and you don't always want to feed them.

[foursticks]

Here's another question, would chinese medicine balls help build up finger muscles? I mean you're essentially using the finger muscles to move them, so would that assist in building up the twitching muscles?

[ULTIMATEDRUMMER]

well, I did notice a slight change in lifting weights over the summer. I worked out 4 hours a-day for a month... I definetly built some muscle and did see a bit of a difference but not much...it was probably just the practice i did during that time that helped. The real truth is you spend more money cracking cymbals and breaking heads... but if it was the weights it would have been the finger curls building up your tendons.

[RobertM]

I think three things help with speed and endurance:

1. Stick Control. Use Stick Control by Stone or a similar book on rudiments and practice A LOT with a metronome and practice pad (or pillow, at times, if you choose). It takes time to build up endurance and speed. Everyone from Jim Chapin to Joe Morello often state it is a matter of time and consistency with practice. Do it every day, for 30-60 minutes, on a practice pad, start slow and gradually increase your metronome. Young guys and gals can often get away with playing faster without worrying about technique, but as you get older your arms will indeed feel pain if your technique isn't there.

2. Stretching. I believe there is a Spring 2006 issue of Drum! magazine that contains a great article on a variety of stretching exercises one should do BEFORE practicing or playing of any kind. (Greg Bissonette is the drummer in the article who illustrates each exercise--I'll look for this reference, if anyone wants to seek out the article.) I recently saw Terri Lyne Carrington play, and she told a small group of us that stretching is super important before playing. In fact, I've even heard that some drummers recommend running warm water over the forearms and/or doing vigorous aerobic work with the arms. Why? Apparently, the more increase in blood flow, the more relaxed and flexible your muscles will be.

3. General Exercise. John Riley, a very well respected jazz drummer who plays several gigs a week and does other projects, once said that he jogs about 3 miles every morning. Just doing basic running, walking, or any kind of healthy aerobic activity, especially as you get older, is going to help keep your limbs nimble and your muscles loose.

That's what I've learned over the years from talking to a variety of pro drummers and researching health fitness and drumming. It would be nice, though, if someone would publish some kind of text on healthy drumming.

Lastly, Jojo Mayer's new video on drum technique demonstrates a lot of good exercises related to building endurance and speed. For example, he talks a lot about how to use the French and German grips to facilitate muscle development along the muscles connecting the pinkie finger to the wrist. I think Dave Weckl talks about this too, in his Natural Evolution series of videos. He discusses how to play rudiments just using your fingers, so that you can stimulate the muscles better in hand and forearm.

[Adam]

This is it exactly Jeff. But you always kinda know where these talks are going when they first start. Guys are trying to find shortcuts and they don't exist. Sometimes you feel like they're not really listening to this other stuff. They just want to buy a couple of ten pound weights and acheive perfect happiness. And then they think if they can only do this 4 hours a day for a month then...

Now I don't say this of everyone, and I do get what Adam was trying to say, but all that doesn't always apply to this one specialized practice. Besides, this hand speed stuff is so fleeting anyway. Last year after I stopped really practicing it I stayed exactly where I was. If I keep doing this just working on music stuff, I'd probably start getting a lot slower if I didn't have the endurance techniques down. Those little muscles are always hungry and you don't always want to feed them.

For the record, I have never used weights to replace drumming. What I am talking about is how beneficial weight training is for the general body, a lot of which help us in drumming.

Weight training is so extremely beneficial when it comes to body movement that I can't even express it. That being said the muscles we use to play (wrists, fingers, ankles) are something that I never touch with weights. That is where I use drumming as the only source of "weight training". That being said working out my arms and shoulders, abs, back, legs, etc has allowed me a greater capacity on the drum set where those muscles are concerned. I am talking exactly about the type of athletic approaches you see Donati, Lang, and Mangini doing, and they are all rather buff fellows. Musicality aside, when it comes to being fit weight lifting might be even better for your heart and lungs than running (depending on how you lift, and how you run). That has always been my approach to weightlifting and it has helped my drumming a lot.

Again, for the record, I'm in and out of the gym before 7:00am and it doesn't interfere with my drum practicing. I never used it as a short cut, but as a tool. And once more the idea that it slows you down is plain wrong.