The drumming injury that cost me $5000

Title: The drumming injury that cost me $5,000

Ten years ago I was stuck at 160 BPM for a long time.

I made five mistakes to get there. Four of them cost me time. The fifth one cost me a year of my playing life and five thousand dollars.

THE FIVE MISTAKES

1. Copying my hero's pedal settings.
I learned max spring tension from watching Alex Rudinger set up his demon drive pedals, and I ran it for years without question because it worked for him. It took me far too long to ask why it worked for him. Answer : He's much heavier than I am and his legs load a pedal completely differently to mine. I felt so foolish after I realized.

Once I made the change, things started immediately progressing in a few weeks.

2. Not focusing enough on technique.
I knew that I wanted my technique to be good. But I never spent enough time focusing on it. And I simply was practicing too fast. I could play 150-160bpm back then and used that as a gauge of how fast I should be practicing. It was totally wrong though, because that was my absolute limit. And practicing at my absolute limit meant that my body was going through top-end stress loads. Since my technique wasn't great to begin with, that stress deteriorates my technique even further, that was the only way my body could play at the range.

So the more I practiced at that top end range trying to increase the limit. The more my legs baked in that deteriorated technique. And it just got worse from there.

Once I slowed down drastically and committed to rewiring my technique completely. The real change started happening. It doesn't feel like anything is changing on the result end of things. How can a drop from 160-100bpm be progress? But it was. I finally could change my foot and leg muscle motions and memory. And it took a lot of time before I understood this was the real indicator of progress. Not BPMs.

3. Not committing to a practice plan for longer than 6 months.
I'd run something for a few weeks, sometimes a few months, not feel a difference, and go looking for a better plan. Nothing I did ever got taken far enough to actually tell me whether it worked.

That changed when I did one exercise for a full year. The endurance ramp that I also learned from Alex Rudinger (he's truly inspirational). That was also the year I climbed to 200bpm for the first time in my life.

4. Letting envy take over.
I constantly compared myself with other social media content creators. I was in the same game as them, and it made me feel bad about my own skills. Why are these people able to play so fast so quickly. Then I realized everyone has problems and I was an idiot to compare myself to the best days of other drummers when I'm having the worst day of my practice.

I still battle with this today. Envy never goes away. But with all the practice that I've got, at least I can stop entertaining it after it's had it's 1 minute of fun in my mind.

5. Not getting consistent rest and over-grinding.
This is the one that hurt.

WHY THE GRINDING DIDN'T WORK

Grinding won't make you fast on its own.

My old grind didn't work because I wasn't working on my bottlenecks. I was putting hours into things I was more comfortable practicing, and avoiding the exercises that actually could make a difference.

I was so committed that when it didn't work, I just added more hours. That was my only lever. Not working? Practice more! Still not working? Practice even more!!!

My commitment without diagnosis meant that I got further down the wrong road before I end up noticing.

That same commitment is what made me ignore my growing ankle injury.

THE WARNING SIGNS I IGNORED

This is the section I wish someone had put in front of me ten years ago. My injury didn't arrive one day out of nowhere. It escalated in stages, over a year, and every stage was a chance to stop that I talked myself past.

Stage 1: A tingling sensation on the inner part of my ankle.
It showed up after sessions and went away by the next day. Easy to dismiss. I decided it was normal fatigue from the work I was doing.

Stage 2: The tingling stopped going away.
Now it was there when I woke up. This is the stage where I should have stopped, but I didn't because it still didn't hurt much. Sometimes it was a dull pain.

Stage 3: Sharp pain.
A different sensation started showing up, a sharp kind of pain. But I kept going because that period, I was in the studio recording a progressive metal album, and I could not stop. We had an opening show already booked for. I gritted my teeth and did it all anyway, but in hindsight I could have avoided this stage much earlier on if I just worked in proper rest days and weeks.

Stage 4: One day I couldn't walk properly.
One day I woke up and I couldn't put weight on my right foot without it hurting like mad.

The podiatrist told me I had ruptured my achilles tendon.

If you're at stage 1 or stage 2 right now, that's the whole point of this post. Those stages are quiet and they're cheap to fix. Stage 4 is neither. And if anything you're feeling in your ankle sounds like this, get some good rest and go see a professional doctor.

WHAT IT COST

The podiatrist told me I had to stop drumming for 5 weeks if I wanted to continue playing drums at all.

I cancelled all my gigs and classes. Five weeks with $0 income. $5,000 in medical treatment bills. And a full year of recuperating before I was back at 100% condition.

I want to be clear about the trade there. I was trying to save time. I was adding hours specifically because I didn't want to waste months sitting at 160. That was the worst trade I ever made in my life.

WHAT I DO NOWADAYS

It took me 5 years to change all five of these habits, one at a time. And since then...
This has been non-negotiable for me:

1. One to two compulsory rest days every week.
Compulsory. Especially on the weeks I feel most fired up. I feel so good about my progress and want to crank up the volume. NOPE. Have to stop myself here.

2. Sleep.
Motor learning consolidates while you sleep. A great session followed by four hours of sleep is a mediocre session. I used to have bad sleep habits. This is another change that I had to force myself to make, which pays off a lot in the long run.

3. Hydration.
Unglamorous, and another habit I was terrible at for years. Now I have a note in my daily alarm that says "SECURE HYDRATION" hahaha. Whatever it takes to help me change my stupid habits.

4. Sessions of 30 to 45 minutes, 5 times a week.
Long enough to get the most out of your muscle memory, but not so long that they start to accumulate fatigue that won't drain away in time before the next session, or the following week, or the following months. Fatigue build up happens not just in your muscles but in your entire nervous system. It starts in your brain.

I've kept this five day practice week for the past five years and I've been really happy with my progress. No more expensive injuries, and no more wasted time.

If you're as committed as I am, you've been practicing consistently. Just make sure you take the consistent rest days too. And I hope you'll avoid the other 4 mistakes that I made. Every single one of them combined allowed me to progress consistently for the first time in my life.

WHERE ARE YOU ACTUALLY AT?

Most of the drummers who over-grind are grinding at the wrong tempo, and with the wrong exercises. Which is exactly the thing that bakes in worse technique and turns it into injuries like mine if you stay super committed.

The free AODB Speed Audit takes two minutes. You'll get your current level and true BPM on screen, and a full diagnosis in your inbox, including which part of your technique is holding you back. And also recommended exercises for you to practice.

Take the Speed Audit: https://bit.ly/doublebass-speed-audit

Practice + Patience = Progress
Wei Lung