Warming up with guitar licks and exercises is an essential part of a healthy, long-lasting playing career. So many players neglect this (I know I’ve been guilty too!).
Here are just some of the benefits:
1)Just as an athlete warms up his muscles before a sprint, so a musician must wake up his hands before playing. Warming up before practice, recording, or gigging gets the blood flowing and significantly reduces the chance of injury. I’ve seen so many friends and colleagues fall foul of career-stifling repetitive strain injuries, don’t let this happen to you.
2) Waking up the hands with some simple warm-up exercises limbers up your fingers and gets you ready for your performance. Real pro’s know the importance of consistency – pulling out a blistering solo night after night will be much easier if you take the time to warm up and set you hands into ‘guitar mode’ before the show starts.
3) To get extra bang for your buck you can work on your technique and improve your repertoire while warming up. With a well-chosen warm-up exercise you can target a particular technical challenge and use the warm-up as a chance to spend a little extra time on it. Personally, I like to take a challenging musical lick or passage and play it slowly as part of my warm-up.
In this video I’ve shown one of my absolute favourite warm-up exercises.
And here’s the TAB:
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