Do you need strength training to improve your guitar playing? [Things guitarists should know about their body]

Hello!
My name is Takuto Fujioka, guitarist and an occupational therapist.
Thank you for always reading!

This time, I would like to talk about the question, "Is it necessary to improve your strength to play the guitar?"

Starting from the conclusion, you should do muscle training.
I think it is especially effective for those who feel "I am clumsy, and I am not good at exercising".

However, this is not a story about being macho and having muscles making you good at playing the guitar.
Strictly speaking, physical activity such as sports and muscle training can also affect your improvement playing the guitar. From here on, let me use the word "exercise" as an all-encompassing term.
So today I would like to think about why it is good to exercise to improve your guitar playing.

Playing the guitar and exercising are the same in the sense that you are moving your body.
As a mechanism for us to move our bodies, there is a flow in which "commands reach muscles by nerve transmission from the brain and movement occurs". I think that motor nerves may be familiar, but it is important to make good use of this "nerve circuit".

However, some people may think, "I'm not good at exercising by nature. I'm not talented because of lack of exercise." I was the same.

I am a little off track here, but what is a nerve? I will also touch on this.
There are different types of nerves, which are divided into the "central nervous system" (brain and spinal cord), which is the center of commands, and the "peripheral nervous system", which sends signals from the brain to the muscles. Think of motor nerves as a rough expression of the peripheral nervous system. There are various other types of sensations, and exercise occurs in a complex manner, but it is complicated, so I will leave it at that.
In other words, motor nerves are something that everyone has. There are "people who are not athletic" by nature, but no one is "unable to exercise".
In this case, it seems that whether or not you can "manipulate your body freely" will be the key to distinguishing between good and bad motor nerves.
Experiencing various movements through exercising and accumulating variations of movements leads to the development of the "neural circuit" that is the basis of all exercises.
It may be easier to understand if you imagine that people who are not good at exercising have fewer "drawers of neural circuits".

I think the same can be said for playing the guitar.
The only way to improve on the guitar itself is to practice the guitar. By practicing repeatedly, the brain will issue commands and learn the movements to play the guitar.
However, playing the guitar is not just about exercising your hands. As you can see from professional guitarists, they control the whole body well and connect it to the performance. In other words, playing the guitar is also a whole body exercise. Do you feel that your guitar will improve if you are able control your body as you wish by nurturing your own neural circuit with exercise and increasing the number of drawers? (Of course, there are exceptions, and even if you are good at exercising, there are cases where you are not good at playing the guitar. This is just a hypothesis ...)

I myself have always hated exercise and muscle training because of my lack of exercise. However, I have recently started walking and strength training, and I am feeling the weakness of my body every day. At the same time, I feel that my guitar practice has improved a lot since I started to move my body every day. Of course, I didn't suddenly improve my guitar playing, but I think it's easier for me to concentrate on my practice and to focus on my physical condition during the performance, which makes it easier to control. What I realized the most was that it became easier to pick up the rhythm.
Controlling your body when playing the guitar is essential for playing comfortably and enjoyably.

If any of the readers of this column feel that they haven't exercised recently, light exercise such as walking or radio calisthenics is fine, so please start! It's interesting to see the guitar from this aspect, because there are new discoveries!
Did you get more interested!? There are many other columns that I wrote about the relationship between the guitar and the body, "Things guitarists should know about their body", so please read them.
There is also my official LINE account（https://lin.ee/6AGJ9JX）Please feel free to contact me if you have any physical problems or problems with your performance.
See you soon!

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