Stretching Exercises and warm up routine

Lowkey

Hi Guys,

Do you guys do hand stretches and warm up routines prior to playing, if so what do you do ?

Regards
Lowkey

warrenpridgeon

Lowkey wrote: Hi Guys,

Do you guys do hand stretches and warm up routines prior to playing, if so what do you do ?

Regards
Lowkey

Currently I play a few scales slowly, building up speed. And also put my hands together like the classic "let's pray" (palms facing each other) and push each set of fingers as far back as comfortable with the other hand and reverse.

AlanRatcliffe

I start playing straight away. Just start off easy-like and gradually push it as I warm up. Then again I'm not doing any major pyrotechnics either.

funkadelic

I never used to warm-up...until I got tendonitis and had to stop playing for more than a year. Granted I was a bit silly to start serious practice again which included chords and lead guitar (read between 1-2 hours practice daily), after almost three years of not playing. So I would advice anyone to warm-up especially depending on the style you play. And have your guitars properly setup by a professional. It makes a hell-of-a difference.

For actual exercises I would recommend checking out carpal tunnel syndrome or tendonitis for guitarists. Some sites have some real good warming up exercises. Also check out Troy Stetina or John Petrucci videos on youtube. I think there's some warming up videos for guitarists if I remember correctly.

Banditman

I didn't warm up either other than play, until I really ended up in the same boat as funkadelic. Went from average weekly play to 3 hours a day for 4 weeks preparing for a rock show with a lot of solo work, and it hit me hard by the second night of the show. Got through the run on Ibuprofen and ice packs, and had to rest my hand afterwards for a while.

In my case it's probably exacerbated by years & years for riding bikes, especially 3 years in the saddle full-time as a London despatch rider. Running a clutch in heavy traffic for up to 8-10 hours a day didn't help, and neither did a few falls. The worst saw me off at 80-odd, when my bike washed out to the right and as I rolled off, my left thumb bent back nicely under the handlebar. I couldn't rest it, and two subsequent injuries in later years to the same thumb mean that if I DON'T warm up, I can't do more than a minute of barre chords without serious pain in the thumb joint / muscle.

The Petrucci video's a good one, as is this one. = The guy does some decent tutorials as well.

I combine both videos' advice for warming up and give myself a good 15 minutes to do it. You can also take a look at these posts from the Seymour Duncan blog on the subject.
http://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/the-players-room/hand-health-coping-with-carpal-tunnel-and-arthritis-as-a-guitarist/
http://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/the-players-room/preventing-disaster-carpal-tunnel-tendonitis-and-hearing-loss/