5 Ways Musicians Should Be Training (And how Generic Plans Miss the Point)

If you’re a musician, how should you actually be training?

Not like a bodybuilder. Not like a marathon runner. And not like someone squeezing workouts around a nine-to-five.

Musicians face a specific set of demands: repetition, fatigue, cognitive load, irregular schedules, and the need to perform well even when you don’t feel fresh.

That requires a different approach.

Beyond my core principle that training should be driven by how well recovered you are, instead of by traditional, “set in stone” training plans, here are five principles that sit at the core of intelligent programming for musicians.

1. Train Across Planes, Not Just Straight Lines

Most gym training lives in straight lines. Forward and backward.

Squats. Lunges. Presses. Rows.

This is great, but it’s incomplete.

As a musician, your body rotates, shifts, reaches, stabilises, and reacts. Your training should reflect that.

Two things matter here:

Movement patterns

Humans move through a small set of foundational patterns: push, pull, hinge, squat, lunge, rotation, and single leg. Training these patterns transfers far better to real-world movement than isolated exercises.

Planes of motion

• Sagittal (forward–back): power and locomotion

• Frontal (side–side): balance and stability

• Transverse (rotation): coordination and control

Training across all three, often at the same time, builds a body that holds up under real demands.

2. Train Outside “Neutral”

Neutral posture is useful.

Relying on it exclusively is a mistake.

Injuries don’t happen in perfect positions. They happen at end ranges, under load, and when nervous system sequencing and programming is out of sync.

If your training only reinforces safe, neutral positions, you’re avoiding the places where resilience is actually built.

Musicians don’t work in ideal conditions. Your training should reflect this fact.

3. Build a Cognitive Buffer

I love helping my clients build capacity so they can operate well even when the body's systems are under high load.

The goal is to automate movement and decision-making, so your brain has spare capacity when it matters. That’s why athletes train beyond what competition demands. If you only ever train fresh, you never learn how to hold quality under fatigue.

Build that buffer, and your baseline performance rises.

4. Layer Coordination and Brain–Body Work

Performance isn’t just strength or endurance.

It’s timing. Accuracy. Rhythm. Reactivity. Nervous system conditioning.

That means training coordination, not just muscles.

This includes:

• Cross-body patterns

• Rhythm-based movement

• Reactive drills

• Precision under load

Train this layer and movement feels cleaner. Control improves. Fatigue becomes easier to manage, and your body starts to work as a single entity.

5. Build a Setup That Travels With You

Consistency beats perfection.

And so, I encourage all of my clients who travel to build a portable setup that can travel with them on the road. When there’s a hotel gym to use, great. And if not, or if time doesn’t allow, you can train backstage, in the park, in your hotel room, or anywhere else, for that matter.

I love to use suspension trainers, slide pads, resistance bands, rope flow ropes, skipping ropes, ladders, cones, and all sorts with my clients.

It just depends on how much space you have in your bag.