strenghtening arm, hand and wrist muscles

[sarasara]

Hi Physios,
I am not a physio but I have come to this forum in the hope of receiving some of your expert advice.
I am an artist who has had to give up my profession for twenty years to look after a sick relative.
Now at the age of 58 I have two years to perfect my art of oriental furniture decoration. This is because I face homelessness after that time and have to be good enough to go to Holywood to join a furniture studio and earn my living.
I have to be extremly good and extremly precise.
I have been doing my basic exercises of drawing lines freehand from the shoulder for the last six months but am failing to achieve accuracy because my muscles have long weakened and my arms and hands are weak, inconsistant and often painful after practice.
My question is how do I strenghten my left hand, wrist and arm?
Can I take bodybuilder suppliments while doing any excercise?
Extremly grateful for your kind assistance,
Sara.

[physiobob]

I would suggest you are experiencing the same aches and pains of any artist. The best thing is to eat well (the supplements you mention will not help) get plenty or rest and build into this new career gradually. Overtime you will naturally strengthen much like someone who taken up climbing for the first time. Their arms are dead after about 5 minutes. On that note, and being that you are in LA, I would recommend finding a wall climbing gym and maybe doing a bit of climbing once or twice a week. This will give you incredible upper body strenght and endurance.

Best of luck

[sarasara]

Originally Posted by physiobob

I would suggest you are experiencing the same aches and pains of any artist. The best thing is to eat well (the supplements you mention will not help) get plenty or rest and build into this new career gradually. Overtime you will naturally strengthen much like someone who taken up climbing for the first time. Their arms are dead after about 5 minutes. On that note, and being that you are in LA, I would recommend finding a wall climbing gym and maybe doing a bit of climbing once or twice a week. This will give you incredible upper body strenght and endurance.

Best of luck

Thank you very much Physiobob. I'm actually in the mountains in Ireland at the moment but I will adapt your advice and find some way of hanging, perhaps from the top of a a doorframe and in that way simulate the effects of climbing.
I was worried that at the age of 58 it was too late to develope my long unused art related muscles. I suppose increasing protein in my diet may help.
Kind regards,
Sara

[alophysio]

It is never too late to start building muscle endurance - just practice and be consistent. It will come. From what you are describing, it is not bulk that you need but control. Adding more protein doesn't help unless you are protein deficient.

Practice, practice, practice, rest and then practice some more!

[sarasara]

Originally Posted by alophysio

It is never too late to start building muscle endurance - just practice and be consistent. It will come. From what you are describing, it is not bulk that you need but control. Adding more protein doesn't help unless you are protein deficient.

Practice, practice, practice, rest and then practice some more!

Thanks alophysio for those encouraging words, I've been doing nothing for six months but drawing hundreds of A4 pages of attempted straight lines from the shoulder; vertical, horizontal, diagonal. I intend to do it for anoher six months. Hope by then my basic drawing skills will be perfected. But until the muscles are there with me I wont have the control and accuracy I am seeking.

[alophysio]

This might seem like a silly question but... why are you just drawing straight lines?

If you are going into furniture, shouldn't you be practicing what you need to do to do furniture making?

Or if you are doing drawing, are there other things to draw apart from straight lines? What about curves, circles, angles, etc?

And it shouldn't take you long to get the required strength - it might take years for you to get the required techniques done right!

Have fun!

[sarasara]

Originally Posted by alophysio

This might seem like a silly question but... why are you just drawing straight lines?

If you are going into furniture, shouldn't you be practicing what you need to do to do furniture making?

Or if you are doing drawing, are there other things to draw apart from straight lines? What about curves, circles, angles, etc?

And it shouldn't take you long to get the required strength - it might take years for you to get the required techniques done right!

Have fun!

I'm doing lines, eventually curved, circular, wavy and decorative, as this is the atomic basis of constructing drawing, after that I will go on to constructing grids then perspective, space projection, then anatomy and eventually figure drawing.
I've done the furniture painting (japannning) work before, just going back to the basis of my art to obtain perfection.
There are so many seperate parcels of muscles involved and by developing them all I hope to get acurate drawing and control. but its a slow process using drawing alone after not working in the field for many years.