# Why are my hands so limber now, and how to keep them that way?



## Manok

Lately my hands have been very loose, looser than they have either ever been or have been in years. I can do things on the piano I don't think I ever could before. I spent about two weeks of doing nothing but Hannon and scales and arpeggios, then had to stop for almost a month because of work. Was it my intense practice schedule that did this? Why are my hands suddenly so limber and loose?


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## gardibolt

I found my hands greatly limbered from playing Hanon regularly---not nearly as intensively as you but just 20-30 minutes per day was plenty to keep them that way.


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## Ingélou

I imagine that the intense practice and the rest both had their part to play. I know you are talking of the keyboard, but (for example) I have read of cases where violinists had enforced absences from playing and found that when they returned to their instrument, they had improved. Maybe things have had time to 'sink in'.

In my own case, I gave up the violin at school and took it up briefly again when I was thirty. To start with it was excruciating - then I started to limber up. But my career forced a second giving up. When I took up my violin again in retirement, I found that my fingers were much more supple and I had no pain at all, unlike the previous time. I put that down to all the touch typing I'd done in the intervening thirty years, which had kept me limber. 

I hope you continue(d) to enjoy an easy dexterity. :tiphat:


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## Taggart

Hanon certainly helps if you concentrate on technique. Remember that Liszt was taught by Czerny who had him do nothing but exercises for about 14 months. Czerny felt that pupils expectation of a piece's musicality got in the way of their technique so they need to build technique and then play with discipline.


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