Mrs TwinBikeRun has been learning the piano too. Unlike me, she has stayed with the essential lessons on the Simply Piano app and has advanced through to level 3. I’m still working my way through chords.

Today, she decided to start chords and after an hour said “It’s too hard, my hands hurt!”.

So do mine but I’d never thought about it until she said. Of course our hands hurt, we’re bashing – I’d say playing, but bashing is a better description of what we’re doing! – away at the keys and it takes an effort to do that when you don’t use your hands for anything else. I type. I hold a knife and fork. I don’t do anything particularly tiring or taxing with my hands. I’m using my little pinky to lift up a truck. Instead, this is the first time I will have been using my hands for long periods of time and apply force and strength while my fingers are fully extended. It’s got to hurt – but not equally. Some fingers are stronger than others, I’ve realised. And that’s when I stumbled across this:

There is a sub-genre of piano videos to teach you how to strengthen your fingers, even down to looking at an individual finger and working on it.

Now, how do I work on my middle finger?