So you are sitting at home, pick up your guitar, and start to practice the newest Metallica song you have been working on, when all of a sudden your fingers start to get stiff after just 5 minutes of playing. This is a common problem that many new and old guitarists face, often unaware of why sometimes they can play for hours at a time, but others times they may only be able to play for a few minutes before their fingers get stiff or sore. This is because your abilities will never stay constant, and will change depending on your state of mind and your body at any given time. One thing you can do to minimize these fluctuations however is to warm up your fingers before trying to play. Yes, it sounds silly to warm up to play guitar, but rock stars do it before a concert, so why shouldnt you?
So exactly how do we go about warming up to play the guitar? It may seem like an odd thing to do, but there really are some great exercises you can do, with and without your guitar. In order to stretch and loosen your hand muscles without the guitar, you can often use a grip master or something squishy such as a tennis ball to squeeze for one or two minutes, to get blood flowing. This is a great way to loosen up your hands every time you play. You can also massage your hands together for a minute or two to loosen them up. The main idea is to get the blood flowing in your hands before you begin playing, enabling you to play longer and better. As for stretching, it is good to stretch each of your fingers one at a time, by pushing each one back and holding it for a couple of seconds. Go up and down both hands doing this a couple of times. Now your hands should begin to feel pretty lose and ready to play.
Now that your fingers are ready, you can warm up with the guitar to get your fingers, hands, and whole body loosened up. One way to warm up with the guitar is to just jam. While you jam, start slowly, practicing switching between chords, and picking single notes, then gradually pick up your speed. Some people prefer to jam to their favorite song or album. Whatever you do, just have fun with it, and focus on loosening up not just your fingers, but your whole body. Just get loose! You can also search online for some more structured chord or note progressions to help loosen up, it is up to you to find what works best.
There are other many more ways that you can get loose to play, just remember that something is better than nothing. Try not to ever pick up and start playing your guitar cold. I would recommend checking out our mini course for some more great info to improve your guitar abilities.
Jonathan Heusman has been gone from a beginner guitarist to a bonified rocker. He aims to share his guitar knowledge to help others learn anything and everything about guitars. You can find his free Mini Course at Guitar Mini Course
