"Giving life to music,” says Phyllis Young, “takes an extraordinary amount of both physical and emotional energy.” As a musician, writer, and teacher of the cello at the University of Texas, Young’s special emphasis has been helping students to make beautiful tones through tension-free motions. This takes practice, and being physically fit is an enormous help, so Young encourages musicians to eat healthy foods and adopt a sensible workout regimen.

“I think walking, dancing, and swimming are the best for a musician,” Young says. “[Such exercises] can help keep our joints oiled and our spirits high.”

Young is cautious about any exercise that could put a strain on muscles and joints. “String players,” she says, “tend to be cautious of exercises that involve repetitive motions or weights. Even a slight injury of a tendon, caused by doing something other than string playing, can be aggravated and sustained for weeks if one continues to play with pain.”

She cites weightlifting, in particular, as being potentially dangerous while doing remarkably little to prepare a musician for the real-life physical challenge of playing his or her particular instrument.

“Repeatedly,” she says, “I observed that the guys built like football players, with huge muscles, usually had much smaller tones than some of the slender, willowy girls with tiny arms, who appeared to have no muscles at all! From this experience I became convinced that the size of our muscles has very little to do with the size of the tone.”