Why Bad Habits in Music-Making Persist So Stubbornly - And How You Can Break Them

As a musician, you surely know this: You practice for hours, but certain movement patterns simply won't improve. Or worse - you develop tension and pain that impairs your playing. The reason for this lies deeper than you might think.

Your Brain as a Creature of Habit

Our brain is programmed to work efficiently. Every movement we repeat becomes an automatic response - a neural pathway that strengthens with each repetition. The problem: Even incorrect movements become habits this way.

If you've been playing with cramped shoulders for years, for example, your brain has formed millions of connections that store exactly this posture as "normal."

Your abilities and your capacity for change are not static. You constantly create and reshape your experiences anew, based on your environment and your previous experiences. Every time you practice your instrument, you modify millions of neural connections in your brain. These connections lead to learned behavior that becomes automated over time.

The Learning Process: From Conscious to Unconscious

Think about the number of hours, days, months, and years it took you to become the musician you are today. All the things you had to think about and concentrate on - and that have now become natural. You've already made a huge time investment in learning and developing new skills.

Take something as simple as the names of the notes in the C major scale. When you learned these names, you probably had a teacher who could tell them to you, so you didn't have to guess them yourself. It took some time and concentration until this information was automatically available in your mind and you could place it in a larger context. You had to study them thoroughly and repeatedly until they felt natural and simple.

The same applies to learning new movement skills or changing habitual movements. Even if you've been playing your instrument for many years, learning new movements can sometimes feel like starting completely from scratch, because you're creating new pathways in the brain.

Understanding Anatomy - Or Not?

Is it really necessary to understand the anatomy behind our new movement abilities? Can't we just play without anatomical knowledge? The answer is: absolutely. There are many things we can do without anatomical knowledge, and they can still be beneficial.

But - and this is a big but - it can be incredibly helpful. Especially when you want to explain something to others or when you want to understand why something isn't working. It gives you a common language with which you can talk about your body, and there are fewer misunderstandings since we can name something concretely.

"Why Can't I Just Play Naturally?"

This is a question I hear often. "Why does my playing feel so cramped? Why can't I just relax?"

Here's the thing: What we consider "natural" is often not natural at all. Just look around: We live in a completely artificial environment. From early childhood, we put our feet in rigid shoes, even though they're actually made for complex movements. We walk on asphalt instead of soft forest ground. We sit for hours in front of screens.

And then we demand from our hands, which were originally made for picking berries and holding tools, that they hit the right key or string with millimeter precision. That is, evolutionarily speaking, absolutely spectacular!

So stop feeling bad when something goes wrong. What you're doing is already a small miracle.

The Thing About "Talent"

Do you know those people who seem to be able to play effortlessly? Who looked like little geniuses even as children? Yes, they exist. But here's the secret: They too have to work consciously on their technique at some point.

What was once easy doesn't automatically remain easy. Even the most "talented" musicians reach the point where they must deliberately work on their movement patterns. The difference is just: They might start from a different starting point.

For the rest of us, this means: Only conscious, engaged work brings us closer to our natural potential. But this doesn't have to be boring or frustrating. It can even become really exciting when you understand what's happening.

Cultural Conditioning and Its Effects

Other reasons why we can't reach our natural movement, technique, and musical expression may lie in our unconscious cultural conditioning. Different cultures are connected to their bodies, nature, and music in different ways.

We unconsciously want to "fit in." This is neither good nor bad, but we can benefit from becoming aware of it and experimenting through conscious choices with new ways of using our body, even if it feels unfamiliar at first.

The Vicious Circle of Tension and Performance Pressure

When you observe some of the world's greatest musicians, there's always something unique about how they move, regardless of whether it looks "right" or "wrong," healthy or unhealthy. Their service to music is completely uncompromising. One of my students once wrote about great musicians: "There's no excuse for what they do at their instrument. No feeling of 'Oh, I didn't get that right. Oh, sorry about that.' It's them, the instrument, the music. All other factors - audience, school, society, or recordings - don't matter."

That's the point: To truly become free, you must grow beyond your cultural conditioning. You must be willing to feel unfamiliar while learning new movements.

Fear Makes Stiff, Security Makes Free

Here's something important: When you're afraid, you automatically tense up. You focus on details, become perfectionistic, turn inward. When you feel secure, you're more creative, intuitive, freer.

Certain muscles and movements are more strongly connected to your sense of security than others. This means: You can influence your mental state through the way you use your body when playing.

I once gave a workshop for students. Three advanced students all said: "Our problem is psychological. We're afraid of the audience." After just two minutes of specific body exercises - strengthening contact with the ground, building support and strength - they suddenly felt much more secure.

This wasn't just physical. When they played the piece again, there was a completely new clarity and control. Instead of trying to solve the problem mentally ("top-down"), we had created a physical condition that changed the psychological experience ("bottom-up").

When the body feels more secure and clearer, the musical intentions deep within us can emerge automatically and effortlessly. In this way, we experience not only a positive psychological effect, but also greater musical freedom through working with the physical aspects of playing or singing.

Conscious Body Work as Key

Here's the really good news: Your brain remains changeable throughout your entire life. Even if you've been playing for decades, you can develop new, more efficient movement patterns. Studies show: After just a few months of conscious work, significant improvements are possible.

The first thing you need is awareness. Stop only paying attention to the musical result. Start feeling HOW you move. Which muscles are tense? Where do tensions arise? How does a movement feel?

When Physical Problems Become Mental

Physical playing or singing-related injuries can cause immense stress. Being hindered from performing for extended periods, suffering from pain and limitations, or practicing for hours without achieving results - what begins as a physical or technical problem can lead to significant mental stress, especially when there seems to be no obvious solution or path to recovery or improvement.

One might then fall into the belief that the cause of the physical limitation was purely mental. I believe that sufficient knowledge about the body as a musician gives us a greater ability to analyze the root cause of the problems we face. It allows us to distinguish between what is physical and what is psychological.

A more complete understanding of cause and effect in how we use our muscles can potentially eliminate guilt, shame, and feelings of failure. What we might consider a lack of ability could simply be a matter of not knowing about a specific coordination skill required to achieve the desired results.

Intention as Key to Expression

From early childhood, we learn to express musical intentions - through imitation, imagination, gestures. Without clear musical intention, music becomes boring and flat. Intention is the key to expression.

Whatever you want to convey to your audience - this intention moves you to the next note, organizes the technical challenges, creates the desired musical expression through movement.

In musicians, the brain parts responsible for planning and organizing movement sequences are particularly well developed. When you imagine a musical intention, neurons are activated that prepare the desired action within fractions of seconds.

Do you know the thing with the milk carton? You think it's full, lift it up and notice - it's almost empty. You lift it much faster than expected. This shows how unconsciously we organize movements based on previous experiences.

Exactly this happens every time when making music. Every note, every phrase needs a specific anticipation of muscle activity. When we repeat a sound, we unconsciously adjust the muscle pattern to match our musical intention. This is how we refine our abilities, hour by hour, year by year.

Conclusion: Patience and Awareness Lead to Success

Breaking bad habits takes time. That's just how it is. But every conscious moment in which you replace an old movement with a better one strengthens the new neural pathway.

Over time, the more efficient movement becomes the new habit. And your playing will not only become healthier - it will also become more expressive, freer, more yourself.

So be patient with yourself.