In this post I will talk about one of the things that most guitar players do not give enough thought about and chooses to put aside: warming up!
Now, you may be asking yourself: why should I warmup? And even if you know why, what exercises should I do? Good questions! And in this post I will try my best to answer them.
So, let’s start with understanding why is it so important to warm up before playing. If you do warmup, you will increase your:
· Playing speed;
· Fluidity and accuracy;
· Flexibility on both hands;
· Overall playing technique.
Not to mention a very important aspect concerning your safety. If you don’t warm up, you can injure yourself, meaning that you might need a long period of time to recover from it and you will lose many days of practicing and the joy of playing.
So, now that you understand a bit better why you should implement warming up in your daily practice, the question remains…
How do you warmup?
1. Stretch
Like any sports we do, we stretch. When playing, the first thing you need to do is stretching your hands and fingers. This is extremely important for preventing injuries. Check how in the video bellow.
Now that your fingers are warm and ready to move, you can begin the actual warm up exercises. The point of warming up is not to improve your playing speed or endurance, it is about getting your fingers and muscles warm and ready to play faster and demanding exercises. These exercises should be played slowly!
2. Work on your right hand
A lot of guitar players think that the left hand is more important than the right one. But that is not actually true. Your hands should be trained equally, so one does not slow down the other. If you can move very fast with your left hand but your right hand cannot keep up then you have yourself a problem.
Let’s look at some basic warm up exercises for your right hand.
3. Work on your left hand
After your right hand is all warmed up and ready to do some fast picking, move to the left hand.
The first exercise is very straightforward: the 1, 2, 3, 4 exercise.
This first exercise will not only warm up your fingers, but it will also allow your hands to communicate better with one another. When you do it in a slow tempo it increases your ability to pick the string exactly when your left hand is pushing on the respective string. In time, you will achieve a more fluid and accurate playing technique. Overall, it does not only affect your speed of playing, but your sound.
The second exercise is what I call “walking up and down the stairs”.
On this second exercise you are working on the ability to move freely between string to string with both hands. When it comes to improvising a solo or a chord melody, the skill of jumping between strings is fundamental. Just like the exercise mentioned above, with this one you will, in time, achieve a greater fluidity and clarity in your playing.
Now the blood is pumping in your hands, you are ready to start your today’s practice. Good luck!
If you find this post interesting and you want to learn other warm up techniques and how you can integrate them in your daily practice, feel free to contact me today.
Gal Dornay
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