Today we’d like to introduce you to Angela McCuiston.
Hi Angela, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I always knew I would be a musician, and the first day I was allowed to learn how to play my mother’s flute, I was hooked. I was THAT kid, spending all my spare time practicing. I did every honor band and clinic I could go to including All-State band and orchestra, Nashville Youth Symphony, TN Governor’s School for the Arts and the grand daddy of them all, Interlochen Arts Camp. Despite how much I played, my body was unprepared to go from a few hours a day to 8 hours a day of playing for eight weeks, and there I received my first playing-related injury. At 16, I had tendonitis so bad holding a pencil was agony. Coming back and seeing the doctor, he told me I needed to stop playing…which was ludicrious. He sent me to Physical Therapy and I kept playing. I discovered a love of lifting weights in college and fast-forward to graduate school. Despite having joined the Army a few years earlier and getting much stronger, I had no idea what good form was and just did whatever the magazines said because that’s what I wanted to look like. One morning in the gym, I was doing a dumbbell bench press and felt a sharp pain behind my left shoulder blade. I couldn’t move. I drug myself to health services where the doctor gave me a prescription for massage and told me to stop playing. I was in graduate school for flute performance, hardly an option! Fast forward to a few years later and I was cramming for a piccolo audition.
After several 4 hour long practice days, I had trouble putting my arm down and breathing caused intense pain. I went to see a doctor and he said, “what’s going on is that you have a severe muscle imbalance between your chest and back/shoulders. Your muscle is stuck in contraction and you have a “knot” in that muscle. Ordinarily, I’d give you a cortisone shot right in the middle of it to calm it down, but it’s directly over your heart and that might kill you, you probably don’t want that. So you should probably just stop playing”. I had had it – what other profession do you tell someone just to quit? If an elite athlete gets injured you don’t tell them to quit the sport, you rehab them and make them stronger, musicians should be exactly the same way! When the doctor mentioned about the muscle imbalances a lightbulb went off in my head and I knew how I could fuse my love of fitness with music, so I got my personal training certification through the National Academy of Sports Medicine, followed by my Corrective Exercise Specialization and set about traveling the country teaching workshops to various universities and conferences on how musicians can avoid injury through strength training. I started training at Next Level Fitness on Church St and when the pandemic hit, I also recorded a series of instrument-specific workouts available for download as well as published my first book, the Musician’s Essential Exercises.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has not. When I got started 11 years ago, NO ONE was doing strength training for musicians. I was dismissed as young and inexperienced and when I wrote an article for a music magazine on “Taking the Pain Out Of the Piccolo” with a very well-known co-writer, the editor said “I know Angela, I’ve been to her workshops and I appreciate her enthusiasm” and would not publish my article because I’m not a medical professional. This was immediately after publishing an article on stretches by a well-known flutist who had zero health knowledge or credentials. I’ve been told that musicians are broke and don’t have any money and I’ve also struggled to learn how to best market myself. My degrees are in music and we got zero education in business, marketing, etc. so I’ve always felt behind having to learn along the way.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Music Strong?
I started the niche of musician strength training and I was the first Certified Personal Trainer to specialize in musicians. To my knowledge, I’m still the only fitness trainer in Nashville who specializes in strength training for injury prevention. The results of the research are staggering in that up to 90% of musicians will experience playing-related pain or injury. I am on a mission to change that. So much is talked about stretching or yoga or Alexander Technique in college, but very little about strength and almost nothing in private music lessons because we just don’t know. Musicians are frequently encouraged by their colleagues to “just rest and stretch” but this can make the problem even worse and if you just push through to get through the gig, you could end up seriously injured having to turn down gigs because now you’re forced to stop playing, go to doctor’s visits, physical therapy, even surgery.
Doctors frequently don’t know what to do with musicians so they will largely tell us to “just stop playing” or be as ignorant and insensitive as to suggest playing another instrument (hmm doctor, maybe you should quit your general practice and just be a dentist?) so I want musicians to know there IS another way! If you only stretch what’s tight and never strengthen what’s weak, the cycle of dysfunction continues and strength training can help in so many ways! From stage presence and building confidence to increasing energy, endurance and stamina to yes, avoiding or overcoming injury. I offer everything from 1:1 personal training (in person and online) as well as online training plans, group coaching in my case study program and downloadable instrument-specific workouts. I’m also building Music Strong into a destination for musician’s wellness with a full team of health professionals passionate about helping musicians.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
I joined the Army in 2003 to play in the Army band and I am still in! I’m currently in the 313th Army Band based at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, AL. I’m also still an active professional musician – I am assistant principal/piccolo in the Sinfonia Gulf Coast orchestra in Destin, FL and am the adjunct flute professor at Trevecca University.
Contact Info:
- Email: angela@musicstrong.com
- Website: www.MusicStrong.com
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/musicstrongfitness
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/musicstrong
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/fluteanjel
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MusicStrongFitnessTraining
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/music-strong-nashville
Image Credits
Visual Eye Photography
