(23) Post Practice Improvement (PPI), Sleep

Post Practice Improvement (PPI): Technique is acquired in two major steps. The first is the application of new hand motions, parallel sets, relaxation, memory, etc., that can immediately improve technique during a practice session. The second is called Post Practice Improvement (PPI) that results from physiological (mostly nerve & muscle) changes that occur after you stop practicing, a process that takes weeks or months. During practice, monitor your progress and quit as soon as a point of diminishing returns is reached, which usually starts after about 10 minutes. Like magic, your technique will keep improving by PPI for at least several days after a good practice. The next day, you should be able to play better even if you made little progress during practice the previous day. PPI is the basis for claims by many respected teachers that, if done correctly, you do not need more than two hours of practice a day.

It is more profitable to practice several things at one sitting and let them all improve simultaneously by PPI (while you are not practicing!), than working too hard on one thing. Over-practicing can hurt technique if it leads to stress, bad habits or injury and beyond a certain number of repetitions, you enter a state of diminishing returns. A minimum number of repetitions is required, about a hundred repetitions, for PPI to take effect. But because we are talking about a few bars played at speed, practicing dozens or hundreds of times should take only a few minutes. Don't fret if you practice hard but don't see much improvement during a practice session. This might be normal for that particular passage and you just have to wait for PPI; often, the worst thing you can do is to keep practicing. If you don't make any progress after a few days (no PPI), it is time to stop and think of new things to do, such as new hand motions or practice methods — don't keep practicing, because if you don't make progress, you are doing something wrong — that is the basic principle of this book.

There are many types of PPI depending on what is holding you back. These types differ in the length of time over which PPI is effective, which varies from one day to many months. The shortest times may be associated with conditioning, such as the use of motions or muscles you had not used before. Intermediate times of several weeks may be associated with new nerve connections, such as HT play. Longer times may be associated with actual growth of brain/nerve/muscle cells, and conversion of slow to fast muscle cell types, such as fast trills or tremolos.

The methods of this book are ideal for PPI because they emphasize practicing only those segments that you cannot play. If you play HT slowly and ramp up the speed for a long section, PPI is insufficiently conditioned because there isn't enough time to make the necessary number of repetitions. In addition, the PPI becomes confused because you mix a large number of easy segments with the difficult ones. If you practice too many skills for PPI together, they tend to cancel each other. Therefore, practice one skill for a sufficient amount of time, play it slowly once, then move on to the next skill. There is no need to revisit that skill until the next day.

PPI is nothing new; let's look at three well-known examples: the body builder, marathoner, and golfer. These examples will teach you how to optimize PPI for piano. While lifting weights, the body builder's muscles don't grow; he will in fact lose weight. But during the following weeks, the body will react to the stimulus and add muscle. All the muscle growth occurs after the exercise. Thus the body builder (and the pianist) must concentrate on whether the exercise produces the appropriate conditioning for PPI. Another example is the marathon runner. If you had never run a mile in your life, and tried it for the first time, you might be able to jog for a quarter mile before you need to slow down to a walk. After some rest, if you tried to run again, you will still tire out in a quarter mile or less. Thus the first run resulted in no discernible improvement. However, the next day, you may be able to run a third of a mile before tiring -- you have just experienced PPI! This is how marathoners condition themselves to be able to eventually run 26 miles. For pianists too, PPI is cumulative and, in the long run, can make the difference between success and failure in acquiring technique. Golfers are familiar with the phenomenon in which they can hit the ball well one day, but terribly the next because they picked up a bad habit. Thus hitting the driver (the most difficult club) too many times tends to ruin your swing, whereas practicing with the #5 wood (one of the easiest clubs) can restore it; therefore it is important to practice with a easier club before quitting practice. The analogy in piano is that playing fast, full tilt, tends to ruin the PPI whereas practicing simpler material (short sections HS slowly) tends to improve it; see [(27) Fast Play Degradation, Eliminating Bad Habits]. This is why the principles of this book apply to many disciplines, not only piano. For the golfer, this means that after practicing with the driver, he should hit a easy #5 several times before quitting.

PPI is triggered by cell death and stress; hard practice causes stress and even cell death, and the body over-compensates for this. You might think that 100 repetitions can't possibly kill cells, but millions cells are replaced every day, and any extra work will increase this replacement rate. "Cell death" is an over-simplification because chemical, physical (stress), etc., factors also induce cell growth (The Human Cells, in Scientific American, October, 2014, P. 76.).

Sleep: PPI occurs mainly during sleep. A mechanic can not service a car while it is traveling on the highway; likewise, most of the growth and maintenance of the body cannot occur during the waking hours. Sleep is not only for resting, but also for growth and rebuilding/repairing the body; this is one reason why sleep is necessary. Babies need so much sleep because they are growing rapidly. This sleep must be the normal, over-night type with all of its major components, especially REM sleep. You may not experience PPI if you did not sleep well that night.

A major process that occurs during sleep is the removal of bad habits during the nightly flush of toxins, etc., out of the brain (Kang, etc., Brain Flush,). How does the body know what is a bad habit? It doesn't, of course. During practice, you acquire technique as well as bad habits. Most bad habits are random motions and their stimuli are initially small compared to the desired technical motions, that are repeated many times. One of the things that happens during sleep is the "flushing out" from the brain of "junk"- small, random excitations that are generally not useful. In this way, the brain rejuvenates itself, avoids expending resources on useless items, and concentrates on the important ones; i.e., it throws out most of the bad habits, leaving mostly useful technique.

What does "flushing bad habits out of the brain" mean in neurological terms? During waking hours, numerous chemicals accumulate or are depleted in specific locations in the brain, such as in the spaces between synapses. This is what happens during practice to condition the cells for PPI. During sleep, the accumulated chemicals are flushed out and the depleted ones are replenished as part of the brain's rejuvenation process. Since stimuli (for technique, etc.) are stored as chemical changes at specific locations in the brain, this flushing process removes most of the weak stimuli, leaving only the strong ones that are too large to flush out. Thus the weak bad habits are literally flushed out of the brain, nerve, and muscle cells.

There is one type of bad habit that is not small and random - speed walls. If you play faster than what your skill level allows, you will repeat the same stressed motions so frequently that the body will acquire that bad habit. One way to get rid of speed walls is to stop practicing that piece. Practicing new material weakens old material by nightly flushing until it becomes small enough for the brain to completely flush it out. If the speed wall is not reinforced, it becomes smaller every night, and is eventually flushed out. Of course, the methods of this book for avoiding speed walls are better than not practicing which may take a long time.

Memory also undergoes PPI for long term memory, during sleep. As with technique, it is important to play slowly at least once before quitting, and then get a good night's sleep. Memory PPI explains why cramming into the late night before an exam is counter productive. This robs you of the time to get a good night's sleep, the cramming only confuses the brain and erases the lessons learned previously. Whatever is learned is only in short term memory and, without good sleep and PPI, is lost by exam time. You will get much better test scores if you only review the main lessons from the text book (which is usually the least confusing source of information and from where the test questions will be taken) and then get a good night's sleep. You sleep better, and the body functions better when happy, so watching a movie or enjoying other fun activities before going to bed will also improve the test score.

Breathing routines for falling asleep: When worried about something, such as a recital the next day, you may have difficulties falling asleep. Breathing routines can be used for inducing sleep. Breathing is controlled mostly by the autonomous processes – automatic body functions: you do not need to breathe consciously (although you can do so at any time). During sleep, breathing is entirely autonomous. Thus the "trick" in falling asleep is to hand over a conscious breathing to the autonomous. Obviously, it works best during sleeping hours and is more difficult at stressful times. We discuss the use of breathing routines for eliminating nervousness in [(48) Origin and Control of Nervousness].

Good sleeping practices require a set sleeping routine. One component of such a routine is to always sleep in the same position: on the same side, or on your back. If you decide to sleep on the right side, then go to bed on the left side and stay there until you feel sleepy, then roll over to the right side to fall asleep – the sleep position becomes the signal for your body to fall asleep. When applying the breathing routine to sleep, use your sleeping position. In my case, sleeping on one side had the disadvantage that the eye on that side became smaller to the extent that eventually, after many years, it became difficult to fully open that eye. Therefore it is important to make sure that the eye is not pressed into the pillow.

It might appear that sleeping on my back is the best solution, but I snore loudly, so I sleep on my side to decrease the snoring and on my right side so I don't snore into my wife's face (she sleeps to my left). She also sleeps on her right side because she thinks that it puts less pressure on her heart.

The breathing routine is simple but requires some practice because it has several components that depend on circumstances as shown in detail below. Basically, all you do is breathe slowly for fixed amounts of time by counting seconds or heart beats. Between inhaling and exhaling, it is necessary to "hold" - stop breathing for fixed amounts of time until you feel the urge to breathe. It is this urge that drives the autonomous sleep, so the hold initiates the process of handing over the conscious breathing to the autonomous. In addition to inducing sleep, this procedure reduces stress, as demonstrated by Yoga breathing techniques. Therefore, piano students should take a few Yoga lessons.

When stressed, breathing slowly, counting, and holding may not be comfortable or feasible. In that case, start by simply breathing in and out comfortably; this may be shallow breathing and relatively fast – whatever is most comfortable. Then start counting and then slow it down gradually. The important issue here is to make the process as easy and comfortable as possible because an uncomfortable or stressful process is not conducive to sleep or stress relief. A good starting routine with counting might be:

inhale for 5 sec., hold 5 sec., exhale 10 sec., hold 5 sec., repeat.

To start inhaling or exhaling, wait till you feel the urge to breathe, which is also the urge that drives the autonomous breathing. Unlike the case for eliminating nervousness, deep breathing may not be necessary because you do not breathe deeply when asleep; it is more important to feel comfortable. Then gradually slow down the whole process to reduce stress; this is often accompanied by slowing heart rate. You can substitute heart beats for seconds; that might be easier to count.

Normal breathing during sleep is not deep, but not shallow (as demonstrated by the propensity to snore during sleep). It is thus important to simulate normal breathing processes during sleep when practicing breathing for sleep. Unfortunately, most of us have no idea how we breathe during sleep although it is clear that we are totally relaxed during sleep.

What happens when this method works is quite interesting. Although you can fall asleep at any point in the routine, it seems to work best for me during the exhaling part, possibly because there is less air in the lung and carbon dioxide is accumulating rapidly, so that there is a stronger urge to inhale and this urge drives the autonomous sleep. As I fall asleep, I first lose the ability to count because the autonomous process is taking over, my thoughts start to wander, and the thoughts turn into dreams. It is best not to fight the autonomous process in order to keep counting, but to let it take over. The next thing I know, I am waking up in the morning, hours later!

A sample sleep sequence containing all major components (in bold) might look like this; numbers refer to counting heart beats; the . . . . . indicates repeat or continue:

(1) Initial rapid, shallow breathing, comfortable [start process].
3 in, 4 out, 3 in . . . . .

(2) slowing down.
4 in, 5 out, 5 in, 6 out, . . . . .

(3) adding holds [forcing autonomous breathing].
7 in, 8 out, hold 3, 8 in, hold 4, 9 out, hold 5, . . . . . .

(4) deeper breathing [may not be necessary].
9 in, hold 5, 10 out, hold 6, 10 in, hold 6, 11 out, hold 7, . . . . . . .

(5) start of autonomous phase, loss of ability to count [sleep phase starting].
12 in, 7 hold, 13 out, 7 hold, 12 in, 4 out, 3 in, 8 out, 7 in, 6 out, 3 in, 3 out, in, out, . . . . . .
Note that the urge to breathe is now so strong that the hold automatically disappears; this is normal.

(6) mind starts to wander, then thoughts turn into dreams.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ . . . . . . . . .

You can start anywhere in this sequence that feels comfortable, even jump back and forth or skip components; it is clear that this is a complex process with an almost infinite number of possible routines.

Why does this work? Because you are forcing the breathing system to transfer from conscious to autonomous, and the autonomous is associated with sleep at sleep time. Thus it may not work well if you are not sleepy or it is not the normal sleep time. Thus holding until you feel the urge to breathe is the most critical step, especially after exhaling, when the urge becomes strongest. As the autonomous takes over, you may feel the urge to inhale without any hold; in that case, skip the hold and start inhaling right away, as it is a sign that you are starting to fall asleep. Clearly, this is a complex process, and will require some practice.

As I practiced, I found that breathing routines can be used as a switch to turn on sleep anytime I want to fall asleep. Soon, it became apparent that simply lying down and hoping to eventually fall asleep didn't make any sense when you can proactively switch on sleep at a precise time. Literature on good sleeping practices generally recommend using the same procedure at bed time, and thinking "fun" or "pleasant" thoughts. A sleep switch should also be a component of this procedure. I now use it every time I sleep. Not only does this make me an expert in using breathing routines because I now practice it every night, but I can't see going to sleep in any other way, without this control.