This routine was originally created in a very flexible way, without a specific frequency, so it could adapt more to any musician and situation. Later, in the Intervention chapter, I will display the version of the routine that we used on the Intervention, which is a lot stricter and has specific frequencies and mandatory exercises, in order to make it researchable. In this chapter, I will explain the original routine, since it is adaptable for any musician, no matter how busy they are.
The routine has three main Phases, that focus on different aspects of our mental training and aspects of our life as musicians. They are the Skill Development Phase, Study Phase and Performance Phase. They are completely independent and, even though they usually follow a natural order (First SkillDev, then Study and finally Performance) - its order can change depending on our needs. Also, the duration of each phase is flexible, you can extend or decrease the length of it depending on your needs.
As the name suggests, this phase makes you work on your mental skills. Throughout this phase you don’t need to use your instrument at all, so it is really fitting for moments or periods of time when we are resting or taking some time off the instrument. Before starting with any exercise, it is necessary to choose a trigger word. It is a word that we will use to trigger our body into a state of relaxation, usually, people choose words like: Chill, Relax, Focus… It could be whatever you want (In my case, I personally chose Atención, Spanish translation of Attention, because I wanted to have awareness on how my body is and be able to relax it).
There are 3 main types of exercises in this part of the routine, which are Applied Relaxation, Mindfulness, and some Skill Development exercises. In order to facilitate this phase, I created audio guides for these 3 exercises, since it is easier just to listen and follow instructions.
The first exercise is an Applied Relaxation Exercise. It consists of tightening and loosening parts of the body in a specific order , so we actively feel them and get used to the sensation of them being either tense or loose. Between sets of muscles, we must repeat to ourselves our trigger word like if it was a mantra and focusing only on the word and our sensation of relaxation. After some weeks pass, when we have repeated the trigger word enough times while being relaxed, our body will start to associate this word with the state of relaxation, so it will be easier for us to relax on command by using this trigger word. Also, as we will be tensing our muscles a lot, we will be able to identify whenever we are tense either in stage or in our daily life and be able to use this trigger word to relax.
The next exercise is a short 5 min guided Mindfulness exercise. This one is really good after the Applied Relaxation, since we are already in a relaxed body state which makes it much easier to calm and relax our minds. Every time that I finish these 2 exercises, I feel lighter because I’m completely relaxed both in body and mind, and that’s the perfect mindset to start working / studying or doing whatever you need to do that requires you to be focused.
The last exercise is the Skill Development Exercise, which is divided into 2 small exercises. The first one is a mental warm up exercise, and the second one is the Skill Development exercise itself, with 2 variations. This exercise makes us imagine complex structures and situations in order to make us work with our brain. People aren’t normally used to these exercises so it’s completely normal if you feel a little tired after them, but it normally goes away after some days doing it. They will prepare us for harder visualization and imagery exercises both in the Study and Performance Phases.
These are all the exercises of the Skill Development Phase and, although the order of the phases can change, these exercises should be done in this specific order, since it really matters to be properly relaxed before doing the Skill Development exercises.
In this phase, we start using our instruments and studying our pieces in a certain way. This phase has some similar exercises, like the Applied Relaxation and Mindfulness, and some new exercises. First of all, in this phase we will have to do some preliminary exercises to get to know the piece and organise our study properly. That’s why before doing any daily exercises, we will have to do 3 exercises: Analysis, Identification or problematic parts and setting SMART goals.
1. 1. The analysis should be done on the first day(s) of this phase to maximise study time and understanding. A complete analysis of the piece will be made (it is recommended for the analysis to be both harmonic and structural, but it is possible to resort to Shenkerian or other types of analysis that are more comfortable for the student) that will allow the student to understand it and have a mental scheme of it, which will help enormously in its study and memorisation.
After these 3 exercises are done, we will have a clear idea of what our piece is about, how is it structured, and how do we plan to study it. Thanks to this, we can start the actual study process with a good and realistic study plan.
For the daily exercises, we will keep on doing Applied Relaxation and Mindfulness the same way as we did it in the first phase, but we will add the Mental - Physical combination exercise that I already explained in chapter 2. It is meant to be used for these problematic parts we identified already.
It is highly recommended, once this exercise has been done, not to play the passage normally until the following day. In this way, we work on the passage in depth and give the brain time to assimilate the information and internalise it before playing normally.
This is the last phase of the routine, which I recommend starting a month / two months before our concert. In this phase, we still have Applied Relaxation and Mindfulness exercises, in a more advanced version, as well as some new imagery exercises.
Before starting with daily exercises, we will do an external focus score (Explanation for external focus on the next chapter). On this score, we will write down the mental cues that we want to tell ourselves when we are playing in order to produce the musical results that we seek for. After practicing with this score for some time, we will have a strong performance inner dialogue as a base for our performance, which will later be complemented by our momentaneous inspiration at the concert.
This is the only one-time exercise on this routine, that we will complement with some Applied Relaxation, Mindfulness, and visualisation exercises.
The Applied Relaxation exercise will be shorter since in this version of the exercise we shouldn’t tighten each and every one of the muscles, the idea is that we are already aware enough of our muscles to be able to relax them mentally, just by focusing on them and their feeling.
The mindfulness exercise will be the same but extended, since the applied relaxation exercise will be shorter, we will do a 10 min Mindfulness exercise instead of the 5 min previous one.
Besides these exercises, we will be doing a Performance Visualisation exercise. This exercise should not last more than 10-15 minutes at the beginning, but in the future, if you keep practising and improve your concentration time, it could be done for as long as half an hour.
In this exercise, we will sit in a comfortable and relaxed place and try to visualise our performance in as much detail as possible, from getting on stage to the end with everything that may happen, and it should follow the PETTLEP guidelines: Physical, Environment, Task, Timing, Learning, Emotion, and Perspective (For more information, see next chapter). I recommend that this exercise is done at least twice a week (there is no maximum, can be done as much times as you want) in order to experience our performance as much times as possible before the actual concert. This will give us confidence and a feeling of security when we have to perform. The advantage of using mental imagery to prepare your performance is that there are no mistakes when you imagine it – you are imagining your own best version of your piece.
These exercises should be as well complemented with weekly recordings, which will help us to raise confidence in us having to play in one shot and is the best way to be objective and actually listen to the sound you are making.
This is the end of the routine, which was modified a bit for the intervention for research purposes. In the next chapter, I will explain how was it modified and how did I research it.
1. 2. After we have analysed and looked at the piece as a whole, we will have to identify problematic parts, or passages that may require more time or study in order to have them ready.
1. 3. Once we have identified which parts will take more time to study, we will have to plan goals and objectives according to the SMART acronym (Specific, Meaningful, Achievable, Realistic and Time based. For more information, see next chapter). These goals should be both daily and weekly, but depending on how much time are we spending on this phase, we could expand them into larger periods of time.
