Warming Up Before Playing Guitar with Advanced Techniques

When you are learning to play the guitar, whether you are having guitar lessons or trying to do it yourself. Warming up before hand is important to help you avoid injuries both in the short term and long term too.

We are not designed to be wrapped around a guitar, once upon a time we were cave men and now we can play guitar! Pretty cool. But that also means we have to look after our bodies and train it to be able to use our hands and fingers effectively.

This guide will help you to know how to warm up so that you can enjoy playing guitar more, and to avoid injuries.

Playing guitar with warm hands

During the harsh English winters, or wherever you are based, it can be tricky to start playing the guitar from “cold”.

Whenever you can, try to warm up your hands to help your fingers get more mobile before playing.

Get Blood Flowing

Try to get as much flowing into your hands as possible, this could include rubbing your hands together. Or holding them in a fist and then release it repeatedly till blood gets flowing through.

You can also shake your hands out, which is super simple to get your hands warmed up.

Advanced Warm-up

The exercises below are for those that already have a little bit of guitar experience.

Play a Barre Chord Progression

A bar chord progression is an excellent warmup. Try something simple such as E A and B. Bar chords work the entire hand and are an excellent chord to warm upon. Take time to rest if you feel pain when playing a bar chord progression.

Hammer-On Scale Climb

Take the pentatonic minor scale. It doesn’t matter where you play it. I would start in the middle of the fretboard at the 5th fret. This would be the A pentatonic minor scale but it doesn’t matter where you play it. You’re going to climb up the scale, but you’re only going to use hammer-ons. You will be familiar with this if you’ve played any sort of lead guitar. Play hammer-ons up the scale until you reach the last note. On the way back down you’re going to want to use pull-offs until you reach the last note.

Hope these few things will help you find ways to warm up before you play the guitar so that you can avoid injuries, if you are ever unsure about anything, then ask your guitar teacher for more information.

About author: Guitar Tuition East London holds Guitar Lessons in London for kids and adults that help them to become more confident and creative musicians. Whether they are a complete beginner and someone who wants to play guitar professionally. Their professional guitar teachers are able to help them.