'When I tried to play, my hand spasmed and shook': why musicians get the yips

Anybody who works and/or plays in a physically high performing context is treading that fine line, close to their own personal limitations. With consequences like repetitive strain injuries (RSI) - or simply 'injuries, period' - being a common part of the high striving practice. Those principles can be similarly applied to high mental/intellectual striving, in terms of primarily-mental burnout, etc.

There's a psychological component too. Anybody ever been walking down the road - a thing most of us have spent hundreds+ of hours doing without ever thinking about it - and suddenly been hit by the sensation that walking feels weird, awkward? Become strangely aware of the stilted mechanics of lifting feet and bending joints, and begun to feel self conscious, as though ones sudden mental doubts were being realised in the form of an unusual, attention-grabbing gait? Then having to sooth over that mental awkwardness, and get back into the feeling of involuntary, un-selfconscious, ordinary walking.

Stepping even further afield, it's a similar mental mechanism - of awareness of that which usually operates unremarked - as that upon which silly comedy lines such as "!You are now!, strangely aware of your ... <insert body part or function here>" or "You suddenly ... can't stop thinking about <insert very awkward thing here>" hinge, and which leverage a form of auto-compulsion, aka getting temporarily stuck in a deformed mental loop.

I'm a clarinetist and got focal dystonia in my senior year of high school. My right pinky would contract whenever I tried to press a key with it; I had to stop playing. The doctor referred me to somewhere at the University of Washington and they ended up giving me a couple botox injections and also took some videos for the sake of research or something. The botox didn't seem to do much. I remember they were really cautious about the dosage since they didn't want me to lose the use of my hand for months.

After 2-3 years without touching the clarinet (I went on an LDS mission after high school), I picked it up again and the focal dystonia had subsided quite a bit. I still didn't have a ton of dexterity in my right pinky, but I never did, even before the involuntary contractions started. I suspect that my brute-force approach to practicing may have exacerbated the problem and helped to trigger the dystonia.

In any case I was able to play in one of the orchestras at college which is an experience I'm really grateful for. I haven't had much time to play since college, but I'm hoping to get back into it in a few years when the kids are older. And I'll definitely be taking more of a slow-and-steady approach to practicing.

Scott Devine, YouTube bass teacher, wears a glove while playing. It's a hack to get around focal dystonia. He discusses it at https://youtu.be/a4KFCDIYEQM

I get something like this from time to time, I notice if I notice it coming on, and I take a break for about 4-8 days, and come back, and things feel smoother than ever.

At least for me.

I also notice if I practice music in the morning, guitar or keyboard, my typing skills increase dramatically for the rest of the day. Not sure if it's related.

I first became aware of the yips when Eric Bristow (The Crafty Cockney - UK Darts player) went public about it affecting him.

When I just looked to find a link I was surprised to see gymnastics listed. I was aware of Simon Biles withdrawing from competition due to 'not knowing where she was in space' as she performed but I had no idea that although known as the 'twisties' it is a close relative to the yips?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yips

I have this and I'm not even a good guitarist, but I used to practice every day. Now my index finger curls into my palm whenever I try to play. It sucks, and cratered my practice time because now practice is just frustrating. I hope someone figures out a way to retrain, but I haven't seen a lot of solutions in the reading I've done.

Have had similar experience in playing tennis. I am an advanced-intermediate player but every now and then I get into a place where I more or less unlearn my forehand in an instant. This isn't a feeling of "oh I can't make a good shot due to mistakes"...it literally feels like I have never picked up a tennis racquet. I assume nerves have a lot to do with it, and some go-to visualizations of proper form can get me back, but not 100% of the time.

It's a weird feeling knowing that your own personal meat bag can broke just like that.

There's a name for this?!

I had suffered with this for years. I'm a guitarist and having your fretting hand lock up is no good! I eventually came to the conclusion I had way too much tension in my neck, shoulders, and forearm. Stuff I found online said play loose, play light in order to fix it. In order to play loose and play light I also needed to play much slower. Over a long time I've managed to build my speed back up while still playing loose and playing light. Turns out I needed to unlearn some really bad habits I'd developed decades ago when first starting to play guitar. The bad habits eventually caught up with me.

But yeah, I always wondered what was wrong with me as my hand would get "frozen" with my fingers curled and my being not able to move them. I'm glad I've managed to get beyond it!

In competitive shooting there's a similar phenomenon. See e.g. https://tremorjournal.org/articles/10.5334/tohm.779

Had this in music school. Struck me completely out of nowhere the first day I performed in studio class. I had never really struggled with performance anxiety and then, suddenly, I was completely paralyzed by it.

A major fear I have is in developing something like focal dystonia. Such a cruel phenomenon.

Gentle reminder that to much computer use can cause a repetitive strain injury.

Not the same thing, but it’s good to be aware about. Breaks are important.

Don’t have the time to read the full article, but I’m baffled that Thoracic Outlet Syndrome is not mentioned once.

A significant amount of Dystonia’s in musicians end up being thoracic outlet syndrome (typically the neurogenic subtype, but a lot of violinists seem to be getting the vascular subtype as well from positioning). Often both (dystonia & TOS, not the subtypes mentioned).

Source: My Harvard medical professor/chief of vascular surgery surgeon that’s written books on this.