There are simple things in this world that need to be taken into account before every action. We all know these simple things, but we often forget about them. Or even we don’t take them seriously.
Here I’m talking about simple guitar warm up before every practice. Many guitar players (most of all beginners) may think that this is just a waste of precious practice time: “A warm up? Huh, don’t be silly!”
“Why I need to waste my time if I can start playing my favorite songs and other stuff right away? My time is limited, there’s something much important to do!” This could be one aspect why musicians treat warming up as something silly.
Another aspect is that guitar players don’t really know how to do it, why it’s very important. It has such a value as playing scales. So, starting with simple, today I would like to tell you about the importance of the warming and preparing hands. I’ll tell you why it needs to be taken very seriously. It’s essential and it’s one of the fundamentals when you want to play guitar for years to come.
The importance of guitar warm-up
First, I want to tell you about my personal experience, about my personal injury that happened recently while practicing the guitar. I think it happened because I ignored few simple things. My injury took me about a month to cure it and only after that period I could start doing my practice again.
I traumatized my left hand. My Carpal tunnel was inflamed. This was a very bad feeling because my left hand was out of the work. I couldn’t play the guitar, I couldn’t practice my favorite licks, songs, and backing tracks. I couldn’t do anything with my left hand. It was swollen. My practice was stopped for about a month. That happened because I ignored just simple things before every practice. That was simply a proper warming-up procedure.
I’m not telling you like in music school right now what to do and what to do not. All I want to tell you is that why this is such an essential and important thing that needs to be done before every practice. It’s up to you to make a decision. Here I’m letting you know how it can be done in a simple way.
So, a good warm-up is preparing yourself for a real workout. You can do simple warm-up exercise before playing or simple hand stretching. Check also out Youtube. There you’ll find good examples.
It can be also fretboard exercises such as scale practice or arpeggio playing. No matter what you do, do it slowly. Let your hands do a warm-up exercise before every time you will play your guitar. After your exercise, your hands become warm and your blood starts to circle around your hands to prepare them.
But why it’s so important before guitar practice?
Well, take a look at (for example) Martial Arts. Martial Arts masters dedicate about 30 – 60 minutes to warming every time before they start their training. They prepare the body to not injure it. The human body is such a great mechanism that it can stand massive loads. But it can’t stand that forever. One day it will fail and then it can turn into an injury.
From personal experience, I definitely can say that it will always happen at an unexpected moment. And when it happens, your practice is gone. By preparing well, you’ll reduce the chances of injuring your hands to a minimum. When your hands and body are prepared for a big load, your body can progress faster because every muscle needs optimal temperature for speed, vibrato licks, fast licks, and complicated guitar playing.
Guitar warm-up is such a simple yet very important practice that needs to be done every time before practice, because:
– It takes about 5 – 10 minutes of your time
– It’s simple stretch
– It reduces chances of any injury
Ok, this was the simple stretch thing that is very interesting (because you can hear all your bones crack). In some time we’ll talk about some practice exercises before doing real “workout”.