Are stiff fingers and rusty joints dampening your guitar groove? Fear not, fellow strummers! Today, I'm peeling back the curtain on my essential pre-practice warm-up rituals that will help you ease into your playing sessions, no matter what physical challenges you might face. From the simplest hammer-ons and pull-offs to get that blood pumping to more complex finger gymnastics, I'm laying it all out to ensure you hit every note with comfort and confidence. Plus, we'll explore how to tweak these exercises to suit your unique needs, keeping you in tune with your body's rhythm.
Now, let's switch gears and talk mindset because let's face it—our mental game needs to be just as limber as our fingers. We all have those days when the fretboard feels like a foreign land, but with a dash of patience and a sprinkle of forgiveness, you'll be dancing through scales in no time. I'll share how mental prep can be your secret riff to success, along with some nifty life hacks like stretching and warm baths that can work wonders for your musically inclined muscles. If you're looking for an extra string to your bow, GuitarZoom's All Access membership and our bustling Facebook community are standing by to amp up your progress. So grab your axe and let's make some melodic magic happen!
Are stiff fingers and rusty joints dampening your guitar groove? Fear not, fellow strummers! Today, I'm peeling back the curtain on my essential pre-practice warm-up rituals that will help you ease into your playing sessions, no matter what physical challenges you might face. From the simplest hammer-ons and pull-offs to get that blood pumping to more complex finger gymnastics, I'm laying it all out to ensure you hit every note with comfort and confidence. Plus, we'll explore how to tweak these exercises to suit your unique needs, keeping you in tune with your body's rhythm.
Now, let's switch gears and talk mindset because let's face it—our mental game needs to be just as limber as our fingers. We all have those days when the fretboard feels like a foreign land, but with a dash of patience and a sprinkle of forgiveness, you'll be dancing through scales in no time. I'll share how mental prep can be your secret riff to success, along with some nifty life hacks like stretching and warm baths that can work wonders for your musically inclined muscles. If you're looking for an extra string to your bow, GuitarZoom's All Access membership and our bustling Facebook community are standing by to amp up your progress. So grab your axe and let's make some melodic magic happen!
Hey, steve here, thank you so much for joining me. I thought what I would talk about this morning, since it is morning for me, is what I refer to as pre-practice and how important that becomes. You know, the older you get or maybe you run into some health issues, things like that. You know, I remember there was a time when I could grab a guitar in the morning and play pretty much as well as I could after a few hours of practice, and it just isn't that way anymore for me. So there was a time when I started panicking because I start practicing for the day and it just seemed like my hands were not optimal. And then you start worrying. Well, you know, could I still play like I used to? Are things different? And what I figured out is that, while I can't say that I can play exactly like I used to 20, 30 years ago, I can get fairly close.
Steve:
And what helps the most is doing what I refer to as pre-practice, which is really just trying to get your mind and your hands to get warmed up. You know, maybe you have arthritis, like I have arthritis, and so you know it takes a little while for the fingers to kind of get going. Or you know, maybe you went out for supper and had a you know really high sodium, you know medium, or a meal, and you know your hands are feeling really really thick and gummy, you know that sort of thing. Or like humidity like where I live, we get a lot of humidity in the summertime and so, you know, your fingers get swelled up, that sort of thing and some of it you can't. I mean, you can do the best you can, but some of it you just have to deal with. But I will say that doing just a proper kind of warm up, or a pre-practice, if you will, is really important. So my point is is, a lot of times when I wake up in the morning, my hands don't feel like they're supposed to, and so what I like to do is, instead of panicking, I just start doing some real simple things on the guitar to get the blood flowing, to get, you know, synchronization going, that sort of thing, and everybody is different, and so what I do is not going to be the same thing that you know you're necessarily going to do. More importantly, what I want you to think about is just don't panic. Start learning to develop something where you're just using a little bit of time maybe it's 10 minutes, maybe it's 20 minutes, whatever it is, maybe it's 30 minutes to just get yourself going and then you can find your zone and then you can do your normal thing. And yes, it takes a little bit longer, but sometimes we have to do that.
Steve:
So what I like to do is I'll sit around, you know, maybe I'm just watching TV, or now I'm at the studio with you and I'll just start doing some hammer on pull off things. And again, nothing where I'm timing it, nothing with a metronome, anything like that. I just start doing some simple hammer on pull off things. Because this is the most important part for me is that my fingers tend to get real gummy in the morning and they don't really want to move like they're supposed to, and so I'll just do real basic, you know, hammer on pull off or legato techniques, trills, if you will, where. I'll just, you know, pick somewhere on the guitar. It doesn't matter where it is, but I'll pick somewhere, and then I'll just start doing some hammer on pull off, you know, over and over and over, and then I'll move to another finger combination and then I'll move to another finger combination and I'll just kind of do that, you know, again, just getting ready.
Steve:
And then what I'll do is and this is kind of the most important part for me is, once I've done this for a little while and a little while might be, you know, five minutes or something like that I start implementing other grouping. So this is where it becomes very important is like doing two to three and two to four, and certainly three to four. You know that sort of thing. And then what I'll do and again I'm not doing anything timed here. You know, you might have seen me talk about this sort of technique when we talk about like the two minute or 30 second exercise, that sort of thing, that's fine. I'm not putting myself through that regimen right now. All I'm trying to do is get my fingers to move so I can start doing my practice.
Steve:
So the next thing I'll do is I'll just start doing combinations where I'll do like one, two, one, three, one, four, again just random things where I'm just moving the fingers back and forth. So I might go first finger to second finger and then first finger to third finger and then first finger to fourth finger, like this. So I'm just going second, third, fourth, third, second, third, fourth, just pulling off hammer-ons to the first finger, and I'm at the seventh fret of the second string, but you could be anywhere. Again, it doesn't make any difference where you're at. So just doing these series of legato, trill style exercises with single fingers, you know, going from one to two and then one to three and then one to four, two to three, two to four, three to four, that sort of thing, in whatever capacity you need to do that.
Steve:
And then I start just doing different kind of round robins, robins, if you will, where I just go one, two, one, three, one, four, that sort of thing, and I might do, you know one Different finger combinations where I'm using the third and fourth fingers back and forth, try and get those kind of warmed up, and I'll just do those kind of things you know just as basic exercises to try and start getting my fretting hand warmed up a little bit. Okay, maybe I start doing some where I go around, like, again, I'm at the seventh fret of the second string. So now I'm gonna go one, three, four, three, okay, or I could go one, two, four, which always sounds like speed racer to me, but you know just something like that and it doesn't have to. You know you might do one, two, three or whatever, but just trying to get yourself warmed up a little bit. So at this stage I'm not panicking. I know that as I'm doing these I'm not at my optimal level, okay, and it's just gonna take a little time. And what I notice is usually five, 10 minutes into practicing this sort of thing, all of a sudden things start loosening up and kind of becoming normal again, if you wanna call it that. But it does take a little bit of time.
Steve:
Once I've got that going, then I'll come over to my picking hand and I'll start doing just some basic, you know, alternate picking or down picking, kinds of techniques, whatever it might be, just basic things like that. And then I'll start trying to kind of line the two of them up. So as I'm playing, you know, maybe I take a scale shape. Let's say I was gonna do again I'll go to the seventh fret of the second string and I'll play seven, eight, 10. And then I'm gonna play seven on the first string. So my usual kind of three-note-per-string patterns that I would normally practice. Maybe I'll start kind of building into something like that Okay, make that round robin as well. Where I go. You know something like that.
Steve:
Again, I'm not pushing into my normal practice routine, I'm just trying to get everybody warmed up. You know, some people like to do groups of four where you just practice. That's a really good exercise too. And again, different mindset. I'm not trying to go as fast as I can, I'm just trying to get myself warmed up. And as I'm doing these, if I notice that maybe my wrist is a little bit sore or one of my finger combinations isn't really working, maybe I'll go back and I'll start trying to do some legato stuff with that finger combination, or maybe this requires me to stop and do some stretching.
Steve:
I will remind you that, at least in my world, there comes a time when drinking more water becomes more important Eating more, having something with potassium like bananas or something like that, and maybe watching a little bit more of the kinds of foods that you're eating. I'm not completely rigid on what it is that I'm eating. I like to eat different. I love pizza, I love hamburgers, I love all kinds of things, but I have to be a little bit more careful on how much of those things that I'm eating. From a health perspective, certainly, but that directly ties into my guitar playing and things like that. So it's just something to think about a little bit. So you've got legato things. Always think left hand, right hand or fretting hand versus picking hand, depending on if you play left handed or whatever. So fretting hand for me is always doing some basic legato things, trying to get the fingers moving.
Steve:
I do a lot of where if I'm sitting around, and a lot of times when I'm sitting around I won't even be plugged into an amplifier, I'll just be watching the news or something like that. And so I might do again. I'll go to the 7th fret of the second string and I'm going to play 7, 9, 10, and then 7, 9, 10 of the first string. So, right there, all I'm doing is playing 7, 9, 10, and then the first string, 7, 9, 10, and then just doing pull-offs all the way back down. But I'm doing that probably with my volume off and I'm just going back and forth like this, over and over and over, using that 1, 3, 4 combination. The fret numbers make no difference. I could go anywhere I want, and then maybe I'll do 7, 8, 10 for a while, just doing again a round robin, if you will just up and down.
Steve:
These are just random things that I do to try and get my fretting hand to start loosening up and get prepared for a real practice regimen. Or maybe I've got songs I have to work on some more complex things, something like that. So this is a perfect opportunity for me to do those kinds of things. And then, once I get done with that, then I move over to my picking hand, do some basic down picking, alternate picking, whatever it might be. Maybe do some 1, 2, 3, 4 stuff or run through some scales Again, not in a complex set, your metronome practice sort of thing.
Steve:
I'm just trying to get my hands to warm up Now. You could certainly use some songs at this point too. Maybe there's some songs out there that you like to warm up to that give you a little bit of a push, but they're not way too difficult for you to play. Maybe you're doing some finger picking stuff to try and get your hands warmed up. Or maybe you're doing some single note picking things, or whatever it might be. That's a great thing to do too, and the one thing I will say about everything that we're talking about here, too, is allow yourself some mistake. You know space. It's okay right now, since we're doing a pre-practice, it's okay if the fingers aren't responding exactly the way that you want, and maybe everything isn't as perfect as you want it to be.
Steve:
As you're practicing, maybe you're just again, you're using this as a warmup to try and get your mind and your body, and obviously your hands and your fingers, to start responding the way that they're supposed to. But we know, going in in this conversation, that they're not quite where they need to be for the day. So we have to give ourselves, we have to forgive ourselves a little bit and give ourselves a bit of space for issues that we might be trying to work through for these first few minutes. So, as you're working on these songs, don't, you know, beat yourself up, because it's not perfect like it was, you know, yesterday at 7 pm when you were really on it. Right, it's nine in the morning, or eight in the morning, or seven in the morning, or whatever it might be. Or maybe it's right. When you get home from work and you know your fingers are sore, your hands are sore from whatever it is that you do for a living, you know your arms are sore, or whatever, you gotta give yourself a little time. As stupid as this sounds.
Steve:
The older I get, the more I like to take baths, simply because it kind of rejuvenates myself so it gets my. I take really, really, really warm baths so it gets my muscles loose a little bit, that sort of thing. You know, for me I play kind of all day. You know I make videos and practice things and play in bands and whatever it might be, and you know my body isn't quite what it used to be when I was in my 20s, but these things certainly help. So it's something to think about a little bit. Basic exercise is a great thing. Basic stretching you know doing, you know basic fundamental stretches, things like that, going out for walks.
Steve:
And again, I'm not telling you you have to completely change your lifestyle.
Steve:
I'm just telling you some things that you might want to think about a little bit.
Steve:
If you find yourself physically or mentally struggling with certain elements of your practice and you're like boy I really I used to do this great and now it's not working, well, you need to look at that and think am I still practicing as much as I used to, or do I need to also deal with the realization that maybe everything doesn't work exactly the way it used to 20 years ago or 30 years ago or whatever it might be.
Steve:
So anyway, most importantly, I want you to be positive, I want you to keep playing, but just find a way that works for you, all right. So if you have any questions, make sure you get ahold of us over here at GuitarZoom. We would love to help you with anything. Have conversation about this and if you're part of the GuitarZoom community on Facebook, you know there's always wonderful people in there that are willing to talk and discuss and help as best they can. So, and, of course, if you're looking for any guitar materials, you can always head over to guitarsoomcom, join our All Access membership or whatever it is you might be looking for. And, most importantly, I want you to have a wonderful day and stay positive and keep practicing, all right.