For other beginners!

Hi! So my teacher gave me two exercises for my bowing that have helped immensely in a matter of days. I wish I knew these sooner, my other teacher never gave them to me.

One is doing bow push-ups or pencil push-ups. You focus on keeping your knuckles a flat surface as well when you're holding your bow (so think about collapsing them a tiny bit). Then using your pinky finger, you exert pressure up and down to lift your full bow or pencil. Do this without playing by the way, and do it until your muscle fatigues. You can check this out on YouTube for a demonstration.

The second is while your bow is on your violin strings, don't play anything but while in the upper-middle half of your bow pronate your wrist back and forth. Really exaggerate the motion. Your elbow will follow your wrist, going up and down. Do this as well until your wrist fatigues, it will train the flexibility in your wrist.

I'm FINALLY able to keep my pinky curved on the bow and also keep the weight in my pinky. Before I was keeping the weight in my pointer finger because I didn't know what it felt like to have a load on the pinky.

I hope this helps someone else as much as it helped me!