How To Play Drums For Fitness

Playing the drums can be an enormous workout, as various exercise regimens attest to. Like swimming, you'll feel that you are employing the entirety of your body as you roll on the flashy snare-drum head, pound out a heartbeat rhythm on the bass drum or maintain unrelenting time on the lid of your hi-hat. Even if you aren't interested particularly in becoming a drummer -- even if you never end up playing in a four-piece band, for example -- you may find a seamless combination of fitness and entertainment.

Step 1

Learn a simple drumbeat. Practice it at various tempos. Actually, if your sole concern is fitness, you don't need to worry about that utmost goal of the musical drummer -- keeping time. Instead, concentrate on incorporating your entire body into the rhythm. In addition to the obvious employment of arms and hands to strike drumheads and cymbals, you'll also be incorporating the feet and legs to thump the bass drum and control the opening and closing of the hi-hat cymbals with their pedal.

Step 2

Beat each drum in descending rhythm. Begin with the snare, and progress to the rest, to stretch your upper body. Drummers often spread a rhythm along the snare drum over the tom-toms to the floor tom for one of the simplest fill patterns. A fill is a creative deviation from the time-keeping beat, usually undertaken to highlight the end of a musical passage. It provides a transition between two sections or simply amplifies the intensity of the music. The fitness benefit is that it requires you to shift about to encompass the entire spread of the drum set, improving flexibility.

Step 3

Combine drumbeats and fills in an extended session of drumming to hone your endurance and strength. Playing the drum set for the length of even an average pop song -- let alone an extended jazz number -- is a substantial cardiovascular workout. Early on, you'll notice fatigue developing quickly -- particularly in your wrists, forearms and hands. Over time, though, you'll strengthen these muscles, as well as those of the arms, legs and ankles. For those interested in musicality and improving drum abilities, such practice will bolster your coordination so that cymbal, snare and bass drum lock together in tight rhythm.

Tips and Warnings

Use a set of bongos, a single drum or any other strikable object if you don't have access to a full drum set. While you may not be able to incorporate the lower body as much, drumming this way still strengthens your arms and wrists and gets the heart rate up to maintain the tempo.