Start running to help your musical practice

Trails in Ray Roberts Lake State Park in Denton County, TX

Since the time I started taking drum lessons at age 11, I’ve been a practicing and performing musician (apologies to my piano and violin teachers from ages 5-10). In almost 28 years, I’ve practiced different amounts of time each week, and my individual practice sessions and group rehearsals/performances have not all been good, bad, or so-so, varying in quality quite drastically. Over those 28 years, I practiced the most when I was in graduate school and it was my job to learn exclusively about music, rehearse in ensembles, and practice jazz drums five to eight hours a day, seven days a week. I played with other musicians the most in my seven years living in Rochester, NY after graduate school, averaging between four and eight gigs a week. I'm thirteen years removed from grad school and six years removed from that busy gigging period, and I now try to practice 30-120 minutes a day and play one to three gigs a month. My quantity of practice and performance is now measurably lower, but my practice/rehearsal/play quality is much higher now than at those earlier peak quantity times. I attribute a large part of that increased consistent quality to new training that takes place outside of the practice room or performance stage--running. I've written before about the value in having a purpose-free hobby, but I'm going to push more people into the realm of getting a hobby with a purpose that benefits your musicianship. If you are like a lot of IfCM newsletter readers and you practice and play music, you may already have experienced some of these parallel benefits. If not, hopefully I can convince some folks to try running to improve your musical practice and performance.

Reason #1: Running will help your musical focus.

I crave doing hard things with as much focus as possible, and being able to run with no headphones so that I can key in on keeping a steady pace or maintain short strides translates directly to the focus needed to practice the drums and piano. A recent example of how this running experience translated to my drum practice occurred last week when I’d started learning a particularly knotty solo by the drum wizard Marcus Gilmore. I had utilized tactics that I regularly employ in my music practice (specifically to slow down and do less) but was still stumped by the choreography of a short 6-beat phrase that didn’t have much repetition to latch on to. I struggled mightily to get from one stroke to the next and started to feel anxiety and frustration exploding in my ribcage like a swarm of wasps barging into a dumpster at a BBQ restaurant. I was not going to be able to learn to drum like Marcus and felt mentally frustrated as well as physically uncomfortable. Then I remembered something that happened two days earlier when I was running a 10k race through my neighborhood. I’d maintained focus through the first 5 miles and decided to push my speed through the last mile+ to get home. As I pushed my physical limits my heart felt like it was going to erupt into my throat until I made it past the 6.2 mile finish distance. I stopped the timer on my watch and noticed that I felt very bad! But I had made it through this challenge and went on with my day feeling a sense of accomplishment. Recalling this running experience and the similar physical and mental struggle helped me refocus on the Marcus lick at the drums (I also slowed it down a bit more). I ended up playing those 6-beats of Marcus wizardry on a gradually faster loop for more than 40-minutes without stopping and the wasp feeding-frenzy feeling went away. Practicing focus in multiple domains not only helps your concentration on the thing you’re doing but makes you less distractible. I’m better able to resist the urges to play something that I already know and “noodle” because of this across-the-board focus practice in running and music.

Reason #2: Hard work and improvement is easier to see in activities like running, and it reminds you that practicing music builds mastery over time.

When I commit to practicing consistently (5-7 days a week for 30-120 minutes each session) it’s easy to lose track of the progress that I make because of the isolation and repetition. I’m in a tiny room, by myself, in my own head, struggling through the work! But if one of my goals is to log and measure my progress (by writing down what tempos I practiced, and for how long) I can see a basic way that I’ve improved by the incremental increase in beats per minute and have logged several hours of hard work to get there. Take 30-seconds at the end of your practice session to write these things down in a notebook and pat yourself on the back for improving through the essential process of hard work!

Reason #3: Training can be solitary as well as social.

As I’ve become a better individual practicer, I value the focused alone time quite a bit. When I do get to play with other folks out in the world, I appreciate the opportunity and people more than I used to, and in turn I’m more comfortable and less self-conscious (and even having fun). Bouncing back-and-forth between individual activities and group activities helps me to see the benefits of both.

The drum practice station.

I have a functional and rewarding running practice now, but it’s taken a lot of trial, error, injury, and help to get to this point. My running experience overlaps my musical practice, and there are a lot of ways that running has mirrored and reinforced my playing. I participated in cross country and track in 7th and 8th grade while wearing bad shoes in the 1990s (which was a time when everyone wore bad shoes for school sports). I managed to complete my last race of 8th grade by crawling across the finish line and later attended our team’s end-of-season banquet buffet at Godfather's Pizza limping on crutches. Apparently bad shoes (and the resulting bad running technique) can create a collection of micro-fractures in your leg bones called shin splints. I didn't run at all until after grad school, but trained to failure when I worked up to an 8-mile run that caused my left knee to stop doing things like “bending” and “supporting body weight." No running for 10 more years after that. I started back for a third time in January 2020, and my previous knee pain diabolically returned. A sports-focused physical therapist watched me run on a treadmill and immediately recommended better shoes and targeted strengthening exercises designed to make my limbs stop disintegrating like those wooden toys that collapse with the press of a button. Since two months of physical therapy in 2020 I've been able to run over 2000 miles without a major break in training.

***Necessary disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor and don't even have a doctorate in MUSIC, so consult a physician if you are unsure whether to try running. I've logged hundreds of miles of bad runs but thousands of miles of good runs and I don't plan on stopping running anytime soon.***

My bad runs were a direct result of two fundamental problems. Bad shoes and bad technique. Just like with music, you need reliable equipment and enough knowledge to ensure that your practice is building and reinforcing the good habits rather than the bad ones. As I’ll outline in more detail below, I want you to start training for a race(!) and you should absolutely invest in a pair of shoes from one of those running stores where 20-year olds who have logged more good miles than I have will watch you run on a treadmill and give you some basic tips for how to run good. Get new shoes. Do what the 20-year olds say. Pick a Hal Higdon training course. Run.

Phase 1 of my running career.

You have to focus to run good. During physical therapy I had to learn some cues to think about to run with good form and not fall into bad habits that hurt my body. Taking shorter strides helped my knee pain from flaring up. Activating newfound muscles in my core helped my "running posture" to be more stable and consistent. Because I've practiced this focus on a lot of runs (I didn't run with any music/podcasts for a long time so I could repeat these cues in my head and notice if I was doing them) they became a habit and now I don't have to think about them unless I notice something going wrong. Now I sometimes run with music or podcasts in an earbud to keep myself company on long runs but I still default to going without distraction when I'm trying to go a specific pace, racing, or in an unfamiliar area or with traffic around. Practice focusing on your technique and you'll internalize it and won't have to think any more (or at least a lot less than when you first started).

Running continuously, fast, or for a long time is a hard thing to do that you can improve at. When I first started out, running a mile without stopping to walk because my legs or joints hurt or I was out of breath was very hard. I had to log enough miles to break through these specific walls of physical and psychological endurance to run (or at least not walk) the whole time. I improved at these aspects by consistently going out and running the 4-5 days a week that I was committed to, and it was very satisfying to complete an entire run without walking (and eventually run faster and longer distances). I have reached different training plateaus and unexpected troubles while working through everything from 25k trail races to marathons, but if I’ve committed to finishing the miles, I've always managed to get them done. My most recent trial was during the Dallas Marathon a few months ago. My knee started seizing up 6 miles into the race and I ended up hopping/shuffling/dragging myself for the last 20 and finished. I've gotten pretty good at being able to tell the difference between “pain that I'll regret” and “pain that I can push through”, but I've gotten hurt and had to stop running for periods of time to rest and recuperate. Running is hard work and sometimes you get hurt.

Running is a great solitary activity but it's something I highly recommend doing with other people out in the world. Most of my running is done by myself or while pushing my 9-month old daughter in a stroller. On days when my wife is working from home we sometimes get to run together and can talk to each other without being interrupted by our wonderful older children (eventually they’ll be able to join us riding their bikes). I 100% recommend running outside because...outside is awesome…and it's also a great way to familiarize yourself with your neighborhood say hi to the other folks who are out in the world, and engage with all seasons of weather one-on-one. Also, trail running is the best. Go run up a hill or mountain and get away from civilization and into the majestic outdoors.

The view from part of the way up Columbia Mountain, Columbia Falls, MT

To gain the musical benefits from running I outlined above, I recommend that you train for a 5k race. Your “race” can be run by yourself around your neighborhood, it doesn’t have to be an official race with a starting gun and finish line tape. If you think that sounds hard, you are correct! This purpose-driven hobby is a hard thing to do at first but gets easier once your body and brain get used to the new activity, and like other hard things to do once you get used to it you’ll want to do more. Something to keep in mind as you stare down the possibility of doing a scary new thing is the fact that a lot of people (myself included) have gone from not running at all to running consistently and having fun they didn’t know existed. There are some great training guides available on the interwebs. I've used Hal Higdon's training calendars a lot and recommend starting with the “Novice 5k” plan.

Running is a very rewarding hobby to practice by myself but I’ll reiterate that it’s something I love to do with my family and friends, and a low-pressure way to interact with neighbors and strangers (if they don’t say hi back, you’ve already run past them). I’d be delinquent if I didn’t close by thanking Kim (family member and friend #1) for being my running role model and helping to motivate me to restart and continue this purposeful hobby. Now that your mind is primed to think about running and the runners you know, ask one of them for advice on where to go for your first mile or 5k. Chances are that they will want to go with you and give you many more tips on the way. As always, don’t hesitate to email me back to continue the discussion. Happy training!

Additional disclaimer: Running and other activities (like listening to, practicing, and playing music) are valuable for their own intrinsic sake. You don’t need more than one reason to do anything if you like it, but if you need an excuse to your friends as to why you’ve all of a sudden started running marathons while getting better at jazz you can send them this article.

Running up Columbia Mountain feels like bad! I can't wait to do it again.

Chris Teal, IfCM Co-Director