Articles on Endurance

My Opinion:

To gain endurance you have to work at it and build it up. In my opinion the methods for building up endurance aren't all that difficult to understand or to do. The first thing to remember when you want to build endurance is that the entire object of building endurance is to build lip muscles and not tear them. What this means is that when you are practicing trumpet and you come to the point where your lips can't play another note you should stop and rest and let your lip muscles rebuild. In other words practice but don't over practice. Know you may be asking yourself "how much time should I give my chops to rebuild?", well what people usually do is rest for the same amount of time that they practiced. So if this means that practiced for 1 hour then you should give your chops a 1 hour rest.

Know what I've done in the past to build up my endurance is this. I would practice until my chops would get tired. I would check the clock to see how long I practiced for until I became tired. Then everyday I would work toward adding a extra minute to my practices. So if one day I practiced for 30 minutes the next day I would practice for 31 minutes and then when I feel comfortable with practicing for 31 minutes I would add another 1 or 2 minutes and then just keep going like that. But this is what I found out what worked for me. Whatever you do to build up endurance just remember the object is to build lip muscles not to tear them. Here are some pointers to remember:

1. Rest often. With short rests you can practice all day.
2. Get the horn off the mouth. Let the blood circulate.
3. Never overpractice. When tired, rest.
4. Build up, do no destroy.