In piano playing, what does “to caress the keys” mean?

There is an old technique called carrezando which literally means to caress the keys. Carrezando playing can injure a musician, it is very dangerous. The reason is because people think it is a technique when in reality it is the symptom or end result of technique. It should not be sought after but rejoiced when it appears.

This is a condition of virtuoso teaching. Many virtuosos move properly and never fully learned the biomechanics of playing because playing well came naturally to them so when they teach, they tell the student what they feel and not what they are doing to get that feeling. The student then tries to force that feeling into their playing but they can make many mistakes while trying to obtain it. Virtuosos are often the worse teachers because they sometimes don’t know how they do what they do.

Consequently students who try to force caressing into their technique begin pressing into the keys, playing with flat fingers and doing all sorts of things which will strain the tendons and then crippling pain will ensue over time because the damage is cumulative. The pianist will ignore the warning signs until one day something just breaks.

Ergonomic playing requires in/out motions, up/down, forward/backward and left/right. When you combine all these movements the player begins to play up and allows gravity to play down. The symptom of the congealment of all these motions is the feeling of caressing the keys. The pianist should not be caressing them but should feel like they are caressing them. When done properly the pianist won’t even feel their fingers because the skeleton will be playing from the arm muscles while the tendons in the hands predominately relax.

Much like petting a dog. Your arm lifts up, you move it toward the head, then down, then you pet down the dog’s back. There are four movements there and without them, there would be no petting. The petting is the result of the four movements where the hand appears do be doing the petting, using the arm.

Better yet, lay your arm on a table and lift your elbow off the table, allow your wrist to flex but keep all your fingertips on the table top. Now pull your arm off the table. Feel that your fingers are caressing the table but the fingers are NOT doing the caressing, it is the result of the arm pulling away. THAT is the carrezando technique. 

But every motion MUST have an equal and opposite motion. Like petting that dog, before you can pet down the dog’s back you must first lift up and forward before you can drop down and backward. If you focus on caressing, you will lose the equal and opposite motions required to play properly. Your fingers have no muscles, all the muscles which move your fingers are in your arm. The finger bones move by a pulley system of tendons. All these equal and opposite motions are what gives a pianist a graceful look but some players force that look into their playing. Now, some schools of technique, such as the Russian, will teach you to do this hoping that carrezando will magically appear but shortcuts often come at a cost. If not pain, ignorance of the mechanics. 

It is erroneously thought that the carrezando technique will give you great speed and a very light pearly touch. Again, that is the end result feeling of a proper technique. Don’t ever seek it, it will find you if your technique is proper.

First, you have to find a good teacher. If you want to find a good teacher, don’t listen to them play, listen to their students. If 90% of them play the way you want to play, you found the right teacher. Hopefully that teacher provides student recital opportunities for you to go hear several at a time. Otherwise, go to any of those ubiquitous Chopin competitions and ask the good students whom they take lessons from. CAREFUL the student isn’t a virtuoso whom the teacher is just guiding.

*I* have a virtuoso student but it is nothing I did. The kid just plays correctly naturally and i keep out of his way.

Answer requested for Malcolm Kogut

Point Of Sound

One of the causes for strain, stress, injury and other maladies pianists, organists and typists experience is simply that they press too hard into the keybed of their device or instrument. Let's first take a look at sports and then physics (that HS subject you think you don't use in real life). 

As a baseball player stands at home plate and the ball is hurtling toward him, he back-swings, forward swings, hits the ball, then all the energy left over from the swing dissipates into the follow through.  The same action occurs when an athlete swings a tennis racquet, kicks a ball, swings a golf club, punches someone, throws a ball, etcetera.  That is Newton's third law of physics that every action has an equal and opposite action.  In order to forward swing, one must first back swing.  Even when we walk forward, as one leg is extending up and forward, the other leg is pushing backward.  So according to the laws of physics, in order to type or play the piano down, one must first lift up.  Many of us were trained or taught to play or type from a resting and relaxed position which actually creates tension because holding a position requires effort.  So we know that everything requires an opposite motion and a follow through.  I bet all you smart kids out there know exactly where I'm going with this.

Now imagine that our baseball, tennis, soccer, golf, football players or boxers are standing before a concrete wall and they backswing then forward swing but instead of hitting an object and following through, they strike the immovable wall.  All the energy of the swing, instead of following through and dissipating, ricochets back into the athlete.  That can hurt. 

A piano is much the same.  Many pianists press into the keybed of a piano and not only does that fail to produce any more of a tone but, all the energy of pressing down is being transferred back up into their finger joints and tendons.  We often don't notice this until after an hour or so of practice or the next morning when we wake up with stiff fingers.  We are taught by bad teachers "no pain, no gain."  In this case, it is very much a lie.  No pain, no gain is fine when building muscle but not for bones, joints, tendons, ligaments and certainly not for our technique.  Often poor technique, strain or missed notes are a result of what we are not doing rather than what we are doing and often we are using the wrong muscles.

Sit at any acoustic piano and very slowly, depress a key so you don't play a sound.  At some point you will hit a little bump in the action, then press through it and you will hit the keybed.  That little bump is the point of sound once you actually play. 

As a pianist drops the controlled weight of their arm onto a key, they must use Newton's third law.  As they hit the point of sound, much like an athlete striking a ball, they must then follow through without hitting the keybed.  When they press into the keybed, not only is their energy backfiring but, they are pressing down and according to Newton, we can't set up for the up motion if we are pressing down.  This hinders technique.  You can't play down if you don't play up and you can't play up if you are pressing down.

So, the key and cure to playing without tension or pain is learning to play to the point of sound and simply following through and not pressing into the keybed.  Unbeknownst to most teachers, their students press into the keybed.  It is a motion that is often invisible.  When a student experiences problems with technique or pain, the teacher often says practice more or run exercises to build strength and endurance and the teacher is often oblivious that the way the student practices is what needs to be addressed, not a clock.

Danger Will Robinson. Before anyone tries to learn to play to the point of sound, there are other components of technique which must first be in place.  This includes controlling arm weight, controlling up/down, controlling in/out from the shoulder and elbow, using the fulcrum of the elbow, controlling rotation of the forearm through the use of the pronator and supinator muscles.  Likewise, there are movements to avoid such as abduction, curling the thumb under the palm, isolating a finger, equalizing fingers, radial and ulnar deviation, and trying to play too relaxed, still and quiet.

A virtuoso technique looks like it is effortless and relaxed.  That is true, the fingers are relaxed because the arm does all the work.  Observers are often looking at the pianist's hands and fail to notice the elbow and arm is actually doing most of the work.  Pianists who attempt to play from the fingers and have fatigue, are told to relax so, they relax the same muscles they are continuing to use and they achieve nothing.

Once all of the proper motions are achieved and the improper ones eradicated, point of sound will just happen. Some "techniques" such as the Russian Technique, surreptitiously imbue the pianist with these movements but personally, I would rather learn the physics and ergonomics of movement rather than being tricked through mindless imitation.  Although, it works to some degree. Where it fails is when a pianist encounters a passage they can't execute and if they knew the mechanics of the arm, would be able to figure out what sort of adjustment is required to play that passage.

I once studied with a leading concert pianist in my area who didn't know what he was doing but had a phenomenal natural technique.  His instruction to me was to watch him play then imitate his motion.  That would have been fine but I already had bad habits hardwired into my brain which were getting in the way.  Since he didn't know anything about ergonomics nor physics, he had no idea how to fix me other than prescribing "practice more."

I once gave a lecture on this topic and a pianist disagreed with me about Newtons third law citing that the piano is down, not up.  The finger must come straight down onto a key.  If the pianist is playing with a "still and quiet hand" and they must also play black keys,   note that the black keys are higher than the white keys.  This results in the still and quiet pianist to stretch or twist to reach those keys which in turn create vector forces or, two muscles pulling one bone in two directions simultaneously.  This creates tremendous imbalance in the arm which controls the hand and fingers and this leads to an incoordinate technique.  Keep in mind your fingers have no muscles.  They are moved by the flexor muscles in your forearm so that is where the pianist must first play from. 

If you were to walk up stairs, your ascending leg would lift HIGHER than the next stair, then come straight down onto it.  If you tried to walk upstairs without lifting your foot higher than the step, you'd trip.  Playing the piano is the same.  We must use the larger muscles of the arm to get the fingers higher than the notes we are desirous to play.  Of course as we become more efficient, we minimize the height but make no mistake, although it may appear invisible, it is still there. Hanon knew this and prescribed the pianist to isolate one finger and lift it high but, this isolation engages the flexors and extensors at the same time resulting in strain to the long flexor tendons which leads to median nerve entrapment (AKA carpal tunnel syndrome). Remember the arm, hand and fingers can only move in one direction at a time.  By abducting, for instance, the hand gets pulled in two or four directions despite the pianist trying to play a passage in a specific direction.

I have no conclusion to this post other than don't try this at home.  Find a teacher who knows what a pronator and abductor is and work from there.

Musicians Warming Up

Every once in a while I come across a piano teacher or musician who think that they need to stretch their hands or run scales to "warm up." The myth behind warming up is that you are able to isolate a body part such as the hands and move them to warm them up.  If that were true, the blood that you think you warm up in your hands while moving them, because of circulation, doesn't stay there.  It circulates throughout the rest of the body meaning "cold" blood is coming back into the hands.  Furthermore, you are not warming up the blood or muscles, the blood is already at its maximum temperature.  The real issue is circulation.

A danger in moving cold hands or other body parts is that the elasticity of the muscles and tendons are compromised because they are in a contracted state and if you try to move cold body parts fast, you can cause damage to the tissue such as micro tears and pulls to either the muscles or the tendons.  Slow movement and in the medium range of motion is always advised when the extremities are cold.

When the body is cold, the blood is kept near the core vital organs and circulation is slowed to the extremities such as the hands and feet. That makes our hands and fingers feel cold and stiff.  Stretching is not a solution and our teachers and coaches have been teaching this mistruth about stretching for years.

When you stretch beyond the mid range of motion you are creating micro tears in the muscle tissue or tendons and the body's response is to rush blood to that site to both immobilize and repair the damage.  This process gives us the sensation of "warming up" when in reality we are damaging our tissue structures. Whenever we move, we must only move as far as the mid range of motion, not the extreme where we will stretch, tear and damage tissue.

There are actually two categories of muscle, fast twitch and slow twitch.  Musicians should take the time to learn which ones are which and how to utilize them in their craft.  Even so, forcing fast twitch muscles to move fast or to stretch them when they are cold and in their contracted state could damage them.  Think of your muscles as being like warm gravy.  The gravy can easily pour out of the bowl when it is warm.  Now put the bowl in the fridge for half an hour and note that it no longer pours fluidly.  You can't just run a spoon through the gravy to warm it up, it needs to come out of the fridge and be warmed totally.
  
If you have a teacher or coach who prescribes stretching and isolation exercises to warm up the body, find another teacher.  It is not their fault that they have been given erroneous information themselves from their own teachers, but, their ignorance on the subject can cause you permanent damage.  Ignorance is not bliss if it results in tendon, nerve or muscular disorders.  That is like going to a mechanic who says that your tires are bald but you can probably get away on them for another few months. He may be the best mechanic in the world but he is risking your life.

If one wishes to truly warm up the body and consequently the hands, one needs to sit in a warm room so that the whole body warms up, not just the part they are going to use.  Another solution is to do some mild whole body movement to get the blood pumping throughout the circulatory system.

There are mini steppers on the market for under $50 that a musician can take to a gig with them and use in the green room before a performance. After doing twenty minutes or about 2,000 steps on one of those, the blood will be circulating efficiently throughout the whole body and one may even break a small sweat.  You won't have to warm up your legs because you've already been walking all day and, movement that is well known such as walking is as simple as the brain turning on and off a switch.  One doesn't need to warm up to remember how to ride a bike.  The brain just knows what to do, like flicking a switch.

Conditioning is important, too.  If you can only do three minutes on the stair stepper before fatigue sets in then you're not going to achieve a full body warm up in that amount of time so, it would behoove you to do this every day so the body is conditioned to work at that level without fatigue.  One doesn't want to go on stage exhausted and weak.  It is also advised to be hydrated before, during and after this simple body warm up procedure.

I'll not endorse any particular brand but you can find mini steppers on Ebay, tax and shipping free. Read the user reviews on Amazon to find a brand you think you can trust.

Healing from Repetitive Stress Injuries Naturally

Healing from Repetitive Stress Injuries Naturally

The original video was an hour long so I made copious cuts to shorten it.  Unfortunately, the many cuts caused an audio sync issue.  Deal with it.  Close your eyes, don't watch my lips. 

Embrace Failure

It is impossible to argue with someone who knows more than you do.  During the intermission of a show where I was the pianist, a young man came up to me saying that he came to the show just to watch me play.  He went on to disclose that he knew I had healed myself of tendonitis, an affliction which he was currently suffering from and he wanted to see me play for himself and talk to me about how I healed.  The conductor was listening in and immediately chimed in with his opinion on the matter.  He began by saying that he had a doctorate in piano pedagogy and trained with some names of people whom I never heard of.   He opined that our injured inquirer needed to work through his pain, build endurance and do strengthening exercises to overcome his malady.  He couldn't be more wrong and since the injured pianist was giving him ear, I quietly slipped away.

The truth is that it doesn't take very much strength nor endurance to play the piano.  The fallacy here is that a lot of pianist feel that the keys are heavy and they need more muscle to dig into the keys.  Everything we need we are born with and our everyday movement is enough to equip us with all the muscle we actually need.  To play properly it is more a matter of what not to do.  For instance, it doesn't require strength to depress a key, only a small amount of arm weight.  When a pianist feels they need to play harder to get the keys down, that is actually a symptom of a dual muscular pull - they are using two diverse muscles to make the hand or fingers to go in two directions at the same time which makes them feel weak.  The muscles are fighting one another to move the bones.  A dual muscular pull will cause tension, pain and fatigue which is not an issue of endurance or strength but, poor technique and lack of knowledge.

Go to a piano and press down a key, notice that it doesn't take very much strength to make the key go down, nor a lot of weight.  Notice also that after you reach the point of sound, when the note plays, the key rests on the key bed. A mistake a lot of pianists make is to play into that key bed.  No matter how hard they play, once the key reaches that key bed, no amount of pressure is going to make more sound nor make playing easier.  The sound has already been made.  Go ahead and play a note, then press into the key bed as hard as you can.  You will probably feel fatigue and pain.  The solution to the fatigue and pain you are now feeling is to allow only enough weight to play the key to it's point of sound, then no more.  Many educated pianists will say that it is impossible to play to the point of sound but that is because they can't do it.  In that case, they are correct.  It can't be done, by them.

Every motion requires an equal and opposite motion.  As you sit at a keyboard, rest your hands on the keys.  If your arms are totally relaxed, your hands should fall off the keys and dangle to your side.  The body wasn't designed to sit in that static position but it can overcome it by forward shifting, shaping and playing with rounded motions which are all equal and opposite to playing down.  Many pianists attack the instrument with brute force because they don't know what effortless playing feels like, so instead they force themselves to feel effortless with strength and endurance.  What they are really doing is training the body to accept fatigue and as my doctorate friend said, build strength and endurance to fight through it.  Fighting tension with tension is a no win situation.  If you play using natural arm weight, you won't be using muscles to the point of fatigue by pressing into the key bed in the first place.

Let's look at body building.  Many people who go to gyms and work out on machines which are only isolating certain muscles.  Stand barefoot on one leg  (if you can) and look down at your ankle.  You should see dozens of tendons and muscles come into play in an effort to maintain balance.  Chances are that you've never isolated and trained each of those individual muscles but, your everyday normal motion is enough exercise and maintain those muscles.  Normal and beneficial activity incorporates many muscles at once.  To exercise your ankles or legs on a machine, the machine will exercise one specific muscle and both legs at the same time because that is how these machines are designed.  Exercising each body part separately but whole would be better.

If someone were to bench press with a single bar with weights on both sides, both arms will assist in the balance and pressing of the bar.  If that person were to use two separate dumbbells, each arm will have to engage all the ancillary muscles to adjust and maintain balance, just like your ankle did.  Going to gyms and working on those machines can be a waste of time.  It would be better to work with free weights.  Free weights are also more demanding of the core so it is like exercising more body parts at one time.  You can't get that whole body workout on a machine designed to isolate a muscle.

Strength and endurance have little functional value in playing the piano just as weight lifting doesn't in our everyday lives.  If I can bench 350 pounds but work at a desk five days a week, all that training is of no value to real life.  The performance demands in our every day life consists mainly of manipulating our own body around desks and computers and pushing pencils.   When is the last time you exerted yourself while writing a memo or reading a report? 

Okay, working out  makes you look good.  That's another issue best discussed with your mental health provider. 

Working out makes you feel good.  Actually, getting adequate sleep, eating a proper diet and drinking plenty of water makes you feel good.  I've worked out before and to be honest, I did not feel good the next day. 

There are two kinds of pain; there is the kind with lactic acid build up where swelling occurs when muscles tissue is torn and the body rushes oxygenated blood to the site in order to repair it (good) and pain from strain and stress on bone, ligaments and tendons (bad).  Pressing into a key bed strains the bone, ligaments and tendons. 

Ligaments hold our bones together.  If you bend a bone or hyper-extend a joint beyond what is normal, you can tear or stretch a ligament.  This is bad since they don't grow back.  This happens often to football players, basketball players and skiers because their foot and knee alignment don't line up.  One goes one way, the other goes another and the ligament in between bears the brunt of the misaligned torque.  A third degree tear of a ligament can only be repaired with surgery.  A first and second degree tear can either be tolerated or it may "scar down" but you will lose flexibility.  For a professional athlete it might be better to have a third degree tear so that a surgeon can graft a new one in its place.  That happened to me and my repaired knee is now stronger than my good knee. 

Tendons move our bones around.  When you stress a joint to the point of stretching or tearing a tendon, this too is bad since they can take years to heal.  Tendons do not have strong blood supplies going to them so they scar before they heal.  A pianist with scarred tendons will feel sharp pain as they move.  That is the scar tissue tearing.  The good news is that this can easily be healed with massage therapy and proper technique.  Proper movement promotes healing.

If you tear muscle, muscle tissue can heal overnight or in a few days as muscles have an ample supply of oxygenated blood flowing to them. 

People think the more they work out the more endurance they are building.  Actually that isn't true.  They are actually improving their economy of motion.  Movement doesn't become easier because of endurance, the body is just becoming more efficient at that particular movement.  Your body is requiring less strength and oxygen than you did prior. 

Have you ever watched "Dancing With The Stars" and witness professional athletes and body builders who have no endurance?  They not only come off the dance floor exhausted but all that muscle robs them of flexibility and true endurance as the muscle mass is starved for oxygenated blood.  The body has to move all that weight and the large muscles get in the way of joint flexibility.  I've even witnessed long distance runners get winded riding a bike.  Why is that?  They trained and isolated specific muscles rather than full body training.   The muscles used to run are different than those used to ride a bike.  That is why ballet dancers can do most everything with ease.  Some astute football coaches even encourage their players to take ballet.  People who have trained in a certain way generally have equal and opposite weaknesses equivalent to their strengths.  Pianists are no expectation.  Train for strength and you will be weak.  Train to the laws of physics and you will play effortless - which is not the same as "strong."

Sharp pain and fatigue are not good symptoms to have.  They indicate that you are doing something wrong.  Any time you feel those two symptoms you should stop and not continue until you figure out what is wrong with the movement.  Otherwise permanent damage may occur.  If your car is giving you problems, continuing to drive won't make the problem go away, the problem will only get worse and become more expensive to repair.  Remember the old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  Live it or pay later.

What about people who exercise for weight management?  The simple truth is, in order to lose weight (or burn fat - which is not the same thing since exercising to build muscle can put on weight in numbers even if you lose fat.  A mirror is a better judge than the scale), you need to burn off more calories than you consume.  If you eat more calories than you burn off, no matter how much you exercise, you won't lose anything. 

The good news is that muscle by its mere existence burns fat without you having to do anything.  One pound of fat can fuel the body for up to 10 hours of continuous activity.  But most people can't and shouldn't go 10 hours without eating.  Beside the amount you eat, what you eat is very important.  Complex carbs, protein, vegetables and lots of water will build muscle and burn calories.  Sugar and simple carbs that turn to sugar will not burn fat.  You're burning the sugar and storing the leftover as fat. 

I'm not a doctor but I have been injured.  I've also been lucky to know people without PhD's who taught me to heal myself.  Some of them didn't even have high school diplomas and they could do what no doctor could.  Because of them, getting injured was the best thing to ever happen to me.  If you are lucky, you'll never get injured but, getting injured might save you from technical and professional mediocrity if you have the capacity to heal.  Consider Gandhi, failing the bar exam saved him from a life of professional oblivion.  Failing isn't so bad, it is what you do with it that makes all the difference.

Heal Thyself; An Ounce of Prevention

ARRGH.  I recently went hiking with a couple of friends and one of the hikers is a high school gym teacher.  I hiked in silent horror as he offered endless advice to his teenage son, daughter and the rest of us  about technical issues and body mechanics.  This man has a Masters in PE and is professionally teaching kids - to harm their bodies. 

The first bit of bad advice he gave was regarding warm ups.  He led our group in unsolicited stretching exercises.   I stood by and watched.  He admonished me to participate saying that if I don't warm up, I will injure myself.  This is true.  However, after getting out of my toasty bed that morning, I sat in my sauna for forty five minutes, took a hot shower, ate a hot breakfast and drove to the mountain base with my car's heat on full blast.  My entire body was warm to the core and raring to go.  But I waited patiently. 

When you stretch muscles, you are tearing tissue so the body has two defensive actions.  The first is to rush blood to the area of damage to begin repair.   This sudden rush of blood gives a feeling of warmth.  You are not really "warming up" the existing tissue (nor the whole body).  You are actually destabilizing isolated parts with micro tears which CAN lead to injury.   It is better to warm the entire body with heat rather than isolating body parts and foolishly think you are warming up by tearing muscle tissue.  The second defensive action of the body is inflammation which leads to the next bit of bad advice.

While hiking, his son sprained his ankle - despite being "warmed up."  Dad, without looking at it immediately told him to "walk it off."  Provided there were no broken bones or torn tendons, walking it off does have some merit. 

If you overuse or injure a body part such as a tendon, the body's response is to do a quick fix by putting scar tissue there.  This however, could lock or freeze up parts which were designed to move.  In the old days doctors would put your body part in a cast, splint or brace.  When the immobilization device was finally removed, the body would be stiff and it would take weeks, months or even years to get full mobility back - if.  Many doctors today favor using simple tape on the injured limb so that the body can still move in its mid range of motion and not to the extreme range of motion where further damage can occur.  A stretch for instance is an extreme range of motion. 

Maintaining gentle mid range movement keeps tendon sheaths lubricated with synovium fluid, prevents scar tissue from forming and tethering a tendon to its sheath and, promotes circulation so that blood can carry away toxins and damaged tissue which are created by our injury or stretch.   Most people can recognize this simple fact after sitting in a car for a long time or resting in the middle of some physical activity.   When they get back up, their body is stiff.  Our circulatory systems are designed to circulate.  Why do you think a "deer longs for flowing streams?"  Flowing water is fresh.  Stagnant water is, well, stagnant.   So, walking it off is good provided there is no serious damage.

Both a friend of mine and myself fell around the same time and both of us injured our right wrists.  Both of us had swelling and bruising.  He wore a brace and I decided to take advantage of the wonderful pain to work on proper body mechanics.  Although my wrist hurt and was tender to the touch, I was still able to play the piano without pain and playing actually made my wrist feel better because I was able to use it and not aggravate it.  Here is a link to a video of me playing a recital just two weeks later.

Flight of the Bumblebee
http://youtu.be/A1FHmgkwi2U 

I admit there were a few problems in my performance but the reason I was still able to play was that I wasn't using my wrist but moving my fingers by using my long flexors and employing the rotation of my forearm.  I am pretty much pain free right now but I still can't dorsiflex but, why would I want to do that to my carpal tunnel?  My friend is still wearing a brace today and has limited mobility and great stiffness.   The difference between us is that I used my body mechanics to promote healing and he is using the stagnation/immobilization method to heal.  I offered some advice but some people won't listen.  He's gobbling down ibuprofen and wearing a brace. 

Back to the hike.  When we returned to the parking lot, our teenager took off his shoe and sock to reveal a purple and swollen ankle: a gorgeous example of nature's cast.   Dad told him that when they got home he could ice it and elevate it.  That's fair.  Treating symptoms can make you feel better but doesn't fix problems.  If your car's tires have uneven wear, getting new tires will treat the symptom but not the problem of the car's alignment.   The first thing this boy needed was an x-ray to ensure there was nothing broken or fractured.   I suggested that the boy put both his feet in a contrast bath and Dad, who has a Masters in PE asked, "What's that?"

If my kid's teacher or coach ever suggested stretching and warm ups in this manner, I'd find a new coach.  Sure I could try to educate them but some egos are too big to admit they are wrong or to change.  That is the beauty of making mistakes but only a few of us can learn from them.  Touch a hot stove and you may never do that again.  Get caught stealing and maybe the shame will make you never do it again.  Sprain your wrist and maybe you will analyze what hurts and what doesn't and you will discover your body's optimal alignment and be better at everything you do - or you can wear a brace and heal in time.

We've all heard the stories of a seeker who ascends a mountain to get an answer from a Zen Master at the top.  When the seeker arrives at the top, finds the Zen Master and asks his question, the Master doesn't answer.  That is because if you don't discover the answer on the journey, you won't understand the answer if it is given to you.  The answer is:  Don't seek the truth - just drop your opinions and the answer will come to you.  A friend of mine is a great songwriter but he is not a musician.  The reason he can come up with beautiful melodies is that his mind is not cluttered with theory, style, propriety or technique. 

Ultimately the newly minted resilience of youth is powerful.  Kids will heal and come back.  But when they turn fifty, and their joints begin to stiffen and become sore, they move and exercise less, they begin to put on weight which stresses the joints further, they develop arthritis and tendonitis, diabetes, clogged arteries and shortness of breath - know that it all started thirty years ago with a stretch and a warm up.  

"When the task is done beforehand, then everything else is easy."
-Zen master Yuan-tong.