Finger Exercises - No Piano Required

foreign welcome to at home with music I'm Leonel Dean now normally you'll find me sitting behind my keyboard where I might be demonstrating things here and there but today I would like to show you some finger exercises that you can do anywhere as long as you have a flat surface a table or something like that and you don't necessarily need a piano finger exercises are important for helping develop the coordination and the strength you need to play the piano with more ease and fluidity how you like that word fluidity but anyway I want to show you some different exercises that you can do without a piano so I'm going to switch positions here I'm going to put the camera over here and all you're going to be able to see are my hands you don't need to see my face when I'm demonstrating things that you do with your hands all right you can see my hands here and I'm going to show you these finger exercises that you can do just sitting at a table the first one I'm going to show you is and I'm just going to show you with the right hand right right now I'm just going to put my right hand there here's how this particular Exercise Works you put your hand Palm down on the table flat now this this might seem a little weird because normally you think well when I'm playing the piano my hand's going to be like this well this exercise you put your palm flat and then what you're going to do is gently lift each finger very gently don't strain don't overdo it and then you hold it for five seconds one two three four five and then put it back down and then we do the next finger one two three four five and this one this one could get a little harder now one two three four five and then finally this one one two three four five oops I forgot the thumb one two three four five now I may be counting a little too fast maybe I should have been saying one one thousand two one thousand anyway you get the idea and then you lift all five fingers while still keeping that Palm down now be careful not to strain you don't you know if your hand starts to do this you're doing it too hard it's very gently you lift all and you can feel the tension here in your arm as you're lifting all five fingers so that's the first exercise now now you put your hand in what would more commonly be the keyboard position I'll put both hands up here and we're going to do here is we're going to lift one finger at a time and tap it one two and you can do this for however many times lift it as high as you can bring it back down and then you can do it with the next finger try doing it like 10 times or 15. I'm not really counting here so it'll be up to you you can see what I'm doing though now this finger this one's always a little harder to move and you're tapping it on the table now if it starts to feel tense or if it starts to hurt then slow down you do not want to strain yourself here just like any type of exercise we're not going for feel the burn it's not that kind of thing we want it to be a very natural movement you're just helping develop some finger independence you're going to do it with your little finger also your thumb and you can actually do this with both hands at the same time I was just using my right hand there or you can do it one hand at a time so now I'm now working on the left hand tapping each finger separately now I could take you a while to figure out how to do that but once you've mastered that then we're going to make it a little harder we're going to hold down a finger and then tap the other ones around it so for example we hold down the thumb and we go through each finger two three four five this is finger number remember how we number the fingers one two three four five so this is one I'm going to hold down one and then two better do it with both hands here hold down one two three four five two three four five and you're not just putting them down you're tapping just like you would if you were doing this at a keyboard now of course if you're doing this in a crowded restaurant people are going to think you're a little weird but that's okay but you can definitely do this while you're watching TV or just relaxing next one is you hold down finger number two and you start with the thumb three four five one three four five all the while holding down finger number two same thing here finger number three one two five one two four and five you might find these fingers don't want to go operated first same thing here you hold down this one one two three five one two three five and you'll be able to feel it in that fourth finger even though it's the one that's not moving whoops I can't do this and talk at the same time here we go and then finally you hold down this one and then one two three four one two three four now once you've had a chance to figure out how to do that we lift not just one finger but two fingers so you can do it with one and two and um I gotta count right four and five you might find yourself wanting to lift other fingers in addition but for an even greater challenge we're going to do two and four like that one two three four just tapping those fingers be careful not to let your arms and your fingers get too tense now if you can't do this right away do not despair you just work your way through and you'll get it and then this one yeah I even have to think about this all right three and five there we are how about that huh and then you can also do one and here we go one and five you see this is not easy these are the advanced finger exercises anyway I think you get the idea now I want to show you one other thing that I use this is a finger exerciser perhaps you've seen these before I bought this off of Amazon there are several different kinds out there this one is called I don't know if you can see that it's called finger Magic this one you have the ability to loosen you know as you press it down I've got it on the highest setting because of course that's that's what I use and you hold it this way and you press down one finger at a time now of course you can on this particular model you can make it easier by kind of you can see how this little little screw thing here whatever comes down and when it's down at the bottom like that now that's the easiest setting now it becomes much easier so you may want to start with something like this if it's adjustable and I would encourage you to find one that's adjustable like this use the lowest setting at first and so you'll do each finger you'll probably be holding it this way because it's a lot easier but you can see that you can do one finger at a time kind of hard to show you one finger at a time that pinky is always pretty tough with these things and you can hold them all down and this is more like an isometric exercise for your hands now once again I want to caution you don't overdo it pain is not the thing that you want to feel when you're doing these type of exercises you might feel a little bit of tension but you don't want to to you're not going for painfulness here that it should not be hurting don't want to overdo it the final exercise you can do is you turn this thing this way and you squeeze it like that and now you're exercising your thumbs and some of the muscles that go back through here once again you'll feel it back here in your arms in your forearms the other thing that you should be doing what I would encourage you to do is to stretch your fingers very gently do it this way where you're stretching them from side to side once again just to the point where you feel a little bit of stretching in there not to the point though where it hurts you can also stretch them this way this is the way I like to do it is sometimes very gently you put your palms down and you can pull the finger up stretch it very gently just to tell you feel a little bit of tension not not you know now after that you can just kind of shake your hands a little bit you should start to feel pretty good and limber this is another exercise you can do is where you make a fist and you stretch your hands out make the fist again stretch your fingers out again this one you may find is going to be you you can only do it a few times and then you can really start to feel it once again don't go to the point where it starts to hurt we just want to get a little bit of exercise in there so those are some exercises that you can do to help strengthen your fingers strengthen the arm muscles that you're using to make those fingers work and that will help your piano playing now of course nothing beats actually being at the keyboard at the piano but when there are those times when you can't get to the piano and you do want to do some work to help increase your finger strength these are some of the exercises that you can use so I hope that's been helpful for you please like the video subscribe to the channel That helps the channel a lot it helps me continue I'll tell you what I'm gonna do I'm gonna pick this up there we go I know this isn't very professional but it gives me a chance to talk to you so like the channel or like the video subscribe to the channel and this has just been a very casual video where I can show you these particular finger exercises and I look forward to talking to you in the next one [Music]

Channel: At Home With Music

Views: 480,570

Keywords: At Home With Music, Music lessons, teaching music, music teacher, music, theory, homeschool, homeschool teacher, homeschool music, homeschooling, how to homeschool, music theory lessons, learn music theory, learn keyboard, piano lessons, school, education, piano tutorial, how to play piano, piano chords, piano technique, how to teach piano, teaching music in your homeschool, homeschool music resources, chord progressions, basic chords, finger exercise, pianotechnique

Id: d3aeFRh1BIs

Length: 11min 56sec (716 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 21 2023