Every professional guitarist starts a session the same way: by warming up.
Whether you’re playing a gig or recital, planning a monstrous practice session, or preparing to impress your friends at home with your killer chops, a precursory limbering up session is mandatory. A thorough warm-up will help bring your playing to peak level and prevent hand injuries.
Here are 11 ways to get your hands and fingers ready for action, both off and on the guitar.
GET 'EM HOT
Here’s an excellent way to get the blood circulating in your fingers and hands and make everything nice and loose.
Simply head to the nearest sink and crank up the hot water. It doesn’t have to be that hot—you don’t want to scald yourself—but it should be warm enough to get your hands loose.
While running your hands under the water, stretch out your fingers. Don’t apply any external pressure to your hands or fingers; simply stretch them out just as you do when you’re playing.
Now before “prune hands” take effect, let’s start working on the warm-up execises.
FOUR-FINGER EXERCISES
The four examples that follow are designed to loosen up all four of your fret-hand fingers as well as your picking hand.
Before you get started with the specifics of each example, there are a couple of general rules to follow for all the exercises here.
First, always start at a slow tempo to ensure that you’re playing the music correctly, and then gradually increase your tempo as you progress. Remember: it’s always better to play something slowly and correctly rather than quickly and sloppily.
Second, alternate picking (down-up-down-up, etc.) is essential for all of the single-note exercises in this workout. This