After repeating the same bar a dozen times, wrong notes may multiply, the pulse may hurry and the arm may begin to use unnecessary force. Adults often read this as “not yet familiar enough” and continue. Yet immediate practice performance is shaped not only by skill, but also by local muscular fatigue, declining attention and changing motivation. A few repetitions later, the hands may no longer be carrying out the movement you intended to learn.
Motor-learning research suggests that training under clear muscular fatigue can reduce current performance and may impair later skill acquisition. Fatigue, however, has several sources, and laboratory tasks are not the same as piano playing, so the evidence cannot prescribe one universal number of minutes. A more useful signal is changing quality: four bars that were controllable produce the same error three times in a row, the body becomes fixed or breathing shallows, and listening retreats from the phrase to merely getting through the notes.
Rest is not the absence of learning. Returning to the same passage after a brief break can test whether fatigue was the main cause. You can also move to a lower-load task, such as reading the score, marking the harmony or hearing the next phrase inwardly. Pain, numbness or persistent discomfort is a reason to stop and seek appropriate professional advice, not a threshold to push through. The central point is simple: the unit of practice is not a minute or a repetition, but one attempt that still has a clear purpose and audible feedback.
ScoreFlow
If you want a defined scope before each return to the piano, Geoffrey Chen’s ScoreFlow can help organise the score and the day’s practice focus. Writing down the small section you intend to address is more useful than extending repetition without a purpose.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6443347/
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00706/full
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