Knuckle Flexibility Exercises

Lucie
Jul 25, 2020
1 min read

Updated: Jul 26, 2020

Recently I attended an online music camp at University of the Pacific. During this camp, I learned a few exercises from Dr. Ann Miller to make my knuckles more flexible. I've always had a hard time with spicatto, which is a type of bow stroke that bounces off the string. In order to do spicatto properly, your fingers cannot be stiff, or tense. So how exactly can you improve your knuckle flexibility?

How to do the Exercises

First of all, on down bows, your fingers should be curved. On up bows, your fingers should be straightened. For both directions, your fingers should be relaxed and not tense. As you near the frog of the bow, your pinky finger should bear most of the weight. The further up you get in the bow, the more the weight should be in your index finger.

To help remember this, think of a tiger paw, and a duck. The down bow would be the tiger paw, as the fingers are curved, and the up bow would be the duck, because the fingers are straight.

You can first practice the hand shapes just in the air. Afterwards, you can practice doing the hand shapes on a pencil or a pen. After about 2 weeks of being able to do that on a pencil, you are ready to do it on your bow.