YES! And it keeps getting worse with age. I no longer go to the gym on days I have gigs, and lift considerably lighter the day before.

I don't lift weightsk, but I find just lifting that banjo and case and carrying it around messes up my arthritis and that messes up my picking. Dave built me a banjo carrier that helps. I can strap in the banjo, a folding jammin' chair, my song book and it also has a bar buoy on it that will hold water or a soda.

I find the opposite to be true. Lifting weights has helped my banjo playing immensely. In particular, I can hold the banjo up longer and can squeeze my fretting hand better and longer. I do weights 6 days per week.

I agree w/ Adam , U have to exercise those limbs ! I get my 86 yr old geriatric exercise from handling firewood , from cutting , stacking , then feeding the stove 24/7 . Establish your own method if possible .

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I worked f30 years as a parts and supply person in garages and other facilities where diesel buses were serviced and repaired in Miami.  In my time I had to lift a lot of heavy stuff. like an engine head for a bus engine!  Over the years, the agency I worked for started programs about lifting and carrying things to decrease the toll of injury and burn out,.   At different times I was involved from the point of view of my union, or later on as part of my job,m to distribute material and equipment about lifting stuff.   Every two or three years like all employees I was required to take a one-day class about lifting and pass a test on it and have to take other classes if I did not score high enough,.

That lifting class always started out with the instructor explaining how an office employee ended up on permanent disability just trying to pick up a paper clip the wrong way.   

The weight of most banjos is such that people need to take special care about lifting them.  The distribution of the weight on a banjo with so much in the pot adds to the strain on your neck and your body. 

I am surprised there are not a whole line of banjo carriers on wheels the way there are for basses and other instruments.   I usually take at least two banjos to an old time jam because I do not like returning, and I have taken three banjos more than once to classes I was giving on banjo history or on playing.    All that in addition to a guitar, stands, etc.  I come from the tradition that if you are a musician, you carry the instrument, not some helper. 

I think back care, better ways to carry the banjo jo, and lifting strategy needs  to be a bigger part of the banjo world.  It is often an issue of strategy of how you lift. To me it is also the question of getting help with the carrying. 

Someone should write a book, or put something on YouTube about back safety and carrying around banjos.   

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Originally posted by Texasbanjo

I don't lift weightsk, but I find just lifting that banjo and case and carrying it around messes up my arthritis and that messes up my picking. Dave built me a banjo carrier that helps. I can strap in the banjo, a folding jammin' chair, my song book and it also has a bar buoy on it that will hold water or a soda.

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quote:Maybe you should market this.   Since I rejoined the world of playing out about 24 25 years ago, there is a constant discussion about how to carry your gear.  I think this becomes more important especially as the pickers age.  I have mainly been playing out or going to jams or giving workshops since I retired 14 years ago.  Most of the old time and bluegrass jams here in W Palm are scheduled when retirees can get to them. 

Thanks for launching this discussion!

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Originally posted by Texasbanjo

I don't lift weightsk, but I find just lifting that banjo and case and carrying it around messes up my arthritis and that messes up my picking. Dave built me a banjo carrier that helps. I can strap in the banjo, a folding jammin' chair, my song book and it also has a bar buoy on it that will hold water or a soda.

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quote:Yes.  A musician and singer well known on the W Coast, Laurie Lewis used to have a whole talk and published an article I think in the old time Herald years ago about how important fitness is to her playing.   As I have posted, while I taught college at night, for 30 years I worked in facilities where buses were repaired, engines and stuff rebuilt,   Some of the lifting I have to do now in retirement to take two banjos and a guitar, and music stands etc to play somewhere is as strenuous as anything I did as a bus parts man, but I do not have a forklift, or the little platform jack, or any of the other equipment I had working.

There is a lot of good material online and elsewhere about lifting because both people who care and employers who do not want to pay disability have out.   Bluegrass banjos or tone ringed open back banjos are heavy  and  have a weight distribution that makes them a real strain on the back if carried improperly or if you are not in shape.

Someone could do a service if they put some lifting advice for banjos online.  

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Originally posted by ottawa_adam

I find the opposite to be true. Lifting weights has helped my banjo playing immensely. In particular, I can hold the banjo up longer and can squeeze my fretting hand better and longer. I do weights 6 days per week.

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My wife and I take a weight lifting/strength training class for seniors twice a week and I think it helps me. I'm 74 and I don't think they push us hard enough to affect my banjo playing.

But last night I went to a New Years Eve party and played for three hours standing up, take away a couple breaks for chili and to get a beer. I woke up this morning feeling like I got a hard workout. So I'm on to something here, eat chili, drink beer,and playing banjo standing up, the perfect workout for the new year. Dang, it is going to be a good one.

I have an acquaintance who is a Neurosurgeon and serious Athlete. He had to stop lifting because his hands would not function with the steadiness and dexterity required to preform procedures under the microscope if he had lifted in the preceding days. He swims mostly now and cycles and jogs some too. No weights for him. My guitar teacher told me mechanics, carpenters and plumbers were his worst pupils.

I think we may be talking about two different scenarios:

1. Weight lifting and fitness increase your overall wellness, and gives you the stamina to play your banjo for hours without getting tired and your back hurting.

2. Hard weightlifting and fitness activities may require a recovery time. And during that recovery time, your ability to play well may be compromised, by muscle fatigue.

I am very familiar with both of these aspects of fitness, and musical abilities. At 64, I can jam for hours on end, and don’t feel much different than I have in the last 40 years. But after a couple hours of heavy lifting in the gym, my playing sucks, my timing and accuracy isn’t very good, and I never really warm up. It’s not bad enough to stop me from staying healthy strong and fit… and It certainly doesn’t stop me from practicing, or even band rehearsal, but I can tell I’m not at top form. BUT... I do schedule my hard workouts around periodic gigs. I lift much lighter and easier the day before a gig, and never lift weights the day of a gig.

Differnt strokes fer differnt folks..

3 years of atrophy..after back to back heart surgeries..
Hung a number on me..

I now have TRex arms instead'ah the good guns i usta have..
But if i manage to stay active..i do ok..
But now mosly play an open back banjo..

Still love me Yates tho.. :0)

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Originally posted by Maurice McMurry

I have an acquaintance who is a Neurosurgeon and serious Athlete. He had to stop lifting because his hands would not function with the steadiness and dexterity required to preform procedures under the microscope if he had lifted in the preceding days. He swims mostly now and cycles and jogs some too. No weights for him. My guitar teacher told me mechanics, carpenters and plumbers were his worst pupils.

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Yeah that's my thinking too. I just did dead lifts today, about 9 hours ago. I'm trying to work through Big Iron on CH that someone gave me the for tabs here. My hands just don't want to cooperate. I'm a bit sick and so did a light lift for me. 176 lbs for 3 sets of 15. I would have thought my hands would have recovered by now.

I have recently been doing quite some demolition work which included carrying a few metric tons of rubble in buckets down a narrow staircase and lifting the buckets over the container sidewall. I got a tickling feeling and some numbness in my left-hand ring and little fingers which didn't help my playing. I do some wrist and finger stretches which seem to help some.

I took a wooden folding chair, and modified it slightly, so I could haul my heavy banjo around festival sites.

It worked well enough at the one festival I did attend, but I don't GO to a lot of festivals.
Free pics for anybody who wants to do some version of it: