So, how do the tendons work when playing drums with different grips?
When drummers play, they use either ‘Traditional Grip’ or ‘Matched Grip’.
Traditional Grip is only used in the left hand, with the palm upwards (more supinated) and the stick held between the fingers. The right hand, by comparison, uses all the fingers to grasp the stick, and the palm is more downwards (pronated).
Traditional grip will be the subject of a different post. Here, I want to concentrate on Matched Grip.
With Matched Grip there are three different types of grip:
- German (fully pronated),
- French (neutral between pronation and supination) and
- American (between the two).
The variations in grip have implications for which tendons are working hardest.
The long flexor tendons will be working hard driving the sticks down (along with gravity), and the small ‘intrinsic’ muscles in the hand will be doing the fines adjustment work. However, I wanted to look at what is going on with the muscles working against gravity, pulling the sticks back up.
Here are some illustrations, with the kind permission of Mike Barnes (www.mikebarnesdrums.co.uk), from his excellent instructional one-minute video on these techniques on his YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFFbCVFzlhs)
The main tendons lifting the thumb are the Abductor Pollicis Longus (APL) and the Extensor Pollicis Brevis (EPB) tendons in Compartment 1 (the ‘DeQuervain’s’ compartment). The radial side of the wrist has two big tendons to work against gravity in the ‘dart throwing’ axis: these are the Extensor Carpi Radialis Longus and Brevis (ECRL and ECRB) in Compartment 2. The wrist is also lifted by the finger extensor tendons in Compartment 4: these are the Extensor Digitorum Communis (EDC) tendons.
In French grip, therefore, we see a lot of use of Compartment 1 and a bit of Compartment 2 (APL, EPB and, to a lesser extent ECRL and ECRB) activity.
In German grip relies on Compartments 2 and 4 (ECRL,ECRB and EDC).
In American we see Compartments 1 and 2 activity again.
Please feel free to look up the extensor tendon compartments (there are 6 of them) and the tendonitis that is occasionally seen in all of them. DeQuervain’s (Compartment 1) is the commonest and is seen mainly in mothers of small children who require a lot of anti-gravity picking up with an extended thumb (see my other post about that). We also see a thing called ‘Intersection Syndrome’ (mainly in rowers, it seems), where Compartments 1 and 2 rub against each other a bit further up the forearm (as seen in the American Grip illustration).
