Drumming Benefits – It Helps Burn Calories & Build Muscles?

Drums are arguably one of the most physically demanding instruments you can play. You need to move all four of your limbs constantly while maintaining good core strength to keep a steady posture. The only non-athletic part of drumming is the fact that you do it while sitting down.

There’s no doubt that drumming is beneficial for both your mind and body, but what are the exact benefits of drumming? Let’s take a look.

Physical Benefits of Drumming

Improved Posture

The biggest physical benefit I’ve personally seen from drumming is the improvement in my posture. I often get comments about how straight I’m sitting at the dining room table. I always end up telling people it’s because I’m so used to sitting with a straight back at the drum set.

Having good posture isn’t something that develops naturally when you’re playing drums. I have certain students who I’m constantly telling to straighten their backs. However, it’s something that you need to constantly be aware of when drumming, leading you to be aware of it in other areas of life as well.

Muscle Memory

Muscle memory is one of my favorite aspects of drumming. The term refers to when you do something over and over enough times for your body to jump into autopilot eventually. Developing muscle memory on the drums is key to getting good at the instrument.

Since I opened my eyes to how beneficial developing muscle memory is, I realized how important it is in several other aspects of life as well. For example, nobody thinks about how to walk most of the time. We just do it. That’s because we all developed muscle memory when learning to walk as children.

Having your body jump into autopilot is a really cool thing to experience, and I feel that because I’m so aware of it on the drums, I’ll be aware of it when I start learning other skills that are physical.

The most evident example of this is when I started training with heavy weights at the gym. I used the same concepts of developing muscle memory as I did on the drums, and the results were great.

Toning

I’ve been asked so many times whether playing drums is a good way of building muscles or toning your body.

So, does drumming build muscle? While you do have to use a significant amount of wrist strength and there are many arm movements, I don’t think that drumming is the answer for getting a great physique or building muscle.

The best way to tone your body is to do resistance training with weights. Since drum sticks and brushes are very light and gravity helps you drop your legs to play the pedals, not much toning gets done. However, the one part of your body that does get a good workout is your forearms.

Your hands have to lift up and down, so the muscles in your forearms are worked constantly. You’re not going to build big muscles anytime soon if you solely rely on drumming, but you will have some impressively tight forearms.

Does Drumming Count as a Cardio Exercise?

Drumming can be seen as a form of cardio training. However, this is only true in very specific circumstances. The effectiveness of cardio training can be measured by how high your heart rate was when you were doing it. The best way to get a high heart rate is to use a lot of energy and sweat.

So, is drumming a good exercise or workout? If you’re not getting your heart rate up while playing drums, it’s not going to be a good form of cardio training. You’d need to be incredibly energetic with lots of movement to get a good workout.

I’ve personally never done this as I’m always quite calm behind the kit. However, I’ve seen many drummers bust their butts on a stage and lose hundreds of calories while doing it. So, drumming is only a good form of cardio if you expend a lot of energy while doing it.

Does Drumming Help You Burn Calories & Lose Weight?

Tying closely in with cardio training is the question of whether playing the drums will cause you to lose weight. Unfortunately, drumming isn’t an effective strategy at all for weight loss.

The key to losing weight is to burn more calories than you consume. You burn the most calories while doing activities on your feet or when you are moving.

So, how many calories does drumming burn compared to other forms of cardio exercise? Since you have to sit while playing the drums, you’ll never be able to burn as many calories as you would if you were running or cycling.

There are so many world-class drummers who have dedicated their lives to practicing and performing, yet many of them are widely overweight. Those drummers are proof that playing drums isn’t the answer to dropping a few pounds.

However, playing the drums causes you to expend more energy than most other instruments, so I’d say they’re the best instrument to play for people who want to stay active.

Mental Benefits of Drumming

Stress Relief

Moving onto the mental benefits of drumming, the first big one would be that playing the drums is a fantastic stress reliever. In fact, it’s almost therapeutic for some!

There have been so many times when I have gotten home from a long day of work and let out all my worries on the kit. If you struggle with stress and anxiety, playing an instrument is a great way of handling it.

Creative outlets often make the best stress relievers, and I think the drums are one of the easiest musical creative outlets as they don’t have notes or keys involved. You don’t need to have any music theory knowledge to be able to create things. You just have to hit things with sticks. Drumming is great that way.

Anger Management

Speaking of hitting things with sticks, the drums are a wonderful platform to let all your anger out on as well. Drummers are always the angriest members of the band, right? While that may not be true, it’s become a common misconception for a good reason.

There’s nothing better than picking up a pair of sticks and pounding out all your frustrations. The best part is that you can still call it practicing. I’ve always found drumming to have a calming effect. I feel incredibly relaxed after playing a few grooves.

Brain Activity

Since drumming requires you to work all four of your limbs simultaneously, it has massive benefits on your brain. This study here found that drummers had to use less brain activity when doing tasks that involved heavy coordination.

So, many complicated tasks are easier to complete for drummers as their brains are used to using the whole body to accomplish them.

Since drumming is both creative and technical, you also need to use both sides of your brain while playing. It provides a fantastic balance and is especially beneficial for younger people who are still developing.

Routine

Developing routines is incredibly helpful for building a healthy mindset. The great thing about drumming is that you need to stick to practice routines in order to improve.

I’ve found that being disciplined when it comes to drumming has helped my mental state immensely. My daily practice schedules give me something to look forward to and they help keep me grounded.

Even if you just practice for 10 minutes a day, having the routine established provides massive mental benefits. Like many of the other drumming benefits, it also branches out into other areas of your life. If you are in the habit of practicing on the drum set regularly, you’ll find that it’s easier to stick to other routines as well.

Achievement and Goals

Once you set up a steady routine, you’ll quickly start seeing results in your drumming. Learning and mastering things on the drum set gives you a great sense of achievement.

It’s not the easiest instrument to learn, especially because you have to use all four of your limbs simultaneously. So, the feeling of accomplishment after nailing a difficult drum fill is immense.

This feeling of accomplishment never stops coming. I’ve been playing drums for over 20 years and I still feel elated after a hard practice session where I can clearly see how I’ve improved at something.

Another healthy aspect of playing the drums is that it’s a goal-setting instrument. You’re constantly going to find yourself setting goals to be able to play certain things and play with certain songs.

Setting goals is highly beneficial for your mental state as it constantly gives you something to work towards. I’ve found that having direction always makes me feel much better.

Wrap Up

I’d argue that the mental benefits of drumming far outweigh the physical benefits. However, there are still some great physical drumming benefits. Whether you’re looking to challenge your brain, improve your posture, tone your forearms, or relieve all of your stress, playing the drums is one of the best things you can do.

I love the fact that drumming is a creative outlet with a physical aspect to it. It also has a low barrier to entry, meaning anyone can pick up a pair of sticks and learn to play a basic beat fairly quickly. It gets a lot harder the more you delve into it, so make sure to set goals and maintain a practice routine.