Dive into the fascinating funtion of one of the most fundamental joints in instrument technique: the wrist.

We sat down with Dr. Aviva Wolff at the Hospital for Special Surgery here in New York for a conversation about the inner workings of the wrist. Dr. Wolff is a member of the Leon Root Motion Analysis Laboratory, where they use high-speed motion capture to study motor function for research and rehabilitation. She’s also an occupational therapist with extensive experience treating elite musicians through a parternership with the famed Juilliard School.

In our coversation, we discuss the group’s research on everday human activities which use transverse or “in-between” axes of the wrist known as the dart thrower motions. Although traditionally less well described than the axes of deviation and flexion/extension which feature prominently in orthopedic study, it turns out that the dart axes may have a trick up their sleeve: strength, stability, and speed.

Tantalizingly, these wrist motions may offer greater performance to the musicians who use them, going at least part of the way to answering age-old questions about differences in ability from one player to another. In our conversation, Dr. Wolff explains the group’s fascinating work in research, in particular their applied focus on rehabiliation of musicians.