When it comes to playing guitar, the warm-up represents one of your daily practice sessions’ most important parts. For me, warming up before I start practicing or before a gig is significant. I always did it since I started playing guitar, and it doesn’t matter if I only have 3, 5, 10, or 20 minutes available; I must do it. It makes me feel better and ready to go. In this post, I will show how to warm up properly and how you can prevent injury. When you play guitar, your fingers, muscle, and tendons are your main asset; take care of them.

Why the Warm-up is so important.

Let’s imagine this for a second: You are about to do 45 minutes of cardio training with a lot of movement and short rests between the sets. What do you think would happen if you start working out at medium speed without warming up?

You will hurt yourself!

That’s right. Now, when you play the guitar is the same thing. If you grab your instrument and start playing like crazy, you will likely damage your tendons and muscle. I had a friend of mine who stopped playing guitar for a year because of tendonitis. We always think this kind of thing won’t happen to us till the moment it happens, and you know what: That sucks!

My experience with tendonitis and cysts.

Four years ago, I was here in London gigging four times a week. It’s always been quite busy in the city and as a musician. Gigs with Electric guitar on Monday, Acoustic guitar on Tuesday/Thursday, and Classical Guitar on a Saturday. This is definitely amazing, but when you are so busy playing a different type of guitars, one bad thing happens:

Your fingers, muscle, and tendons get tired!

Gigging many times a week is tiring. Even if I was enjoying it sometimes, you go to the venue, and all you want is to play quickly and hope the gig finishes as quickly as possible. We all have to do some crappy gigs sometimes. You forget to warm up, and all you want is a drink before the show. I was using a different type of guitars, so I went back home one day, and I felt something growing on my left-hand finger!

Like a horror movie, I could see this freaking lump between my hand and finger. This thing was fairly small, but I could feel it. It didn’t really hurt, but it was there. After a month, the lump had grown massively to the point I could feel it touching the bottom neck when I was playing a C major chord.

That was my finger!

You can definitely see the swollen part. When I went to the doctor, he asked me straight away if I was using different guitars and warming up before playing. I said, no! He said the problem occurred because I was changing posture all the time (Classical and electric guitar are so different) and because I didn’t warm up, the fingers were stressed, so a Cyst grew up. But I was lucky. The Cyst was just liquid, so it was easy to get it!

Warm up is important, guys!

I was lucky because my problem was quite simple, but you can get some serious problems if the cyst keeps coming back. If that happens, you will need a small operation. You can also have problems with tendonitis and muscle pain.

You can avoid that if you warm up!

After this bad experience, I always warm up every time I play and guess what. The cyst is gone for good!

Let me give you three killing warm-ups that will help you prevent injury and get your fingers going. You can use them before a gig or before your daily routine.

Exercise 1

In this exercise 1, we will be working on repetition and stretch. The melody will be played on the third string. Notice that the rhythm is based on triplets, so make sure you group it in 123 123 123 123 triplet groups. Make sure you practice this warm-up nice and slow. You are not working on speed right now; you are warming up. Let each note ring out and make the transition smooth. Form over speed, guys. Form.Over.Speed! Repeat the exercise four times, keeping the same speed of 75Bpm. Don’t speed up!

Exercise 2

In warm-up number 2, we are using a pyramid shape. You will be slowly stretching the fingers every time you start the exercise again. We will start with a 1-2 combination, then 1-3 and 1-4. This is an amazing exercise because you are both warming up and stretching at the same time. There are three things you have to keep in mind when you practice this exercise:

• Always place the fingers close to the fret wire. Stretch as much as you can.
• Always use alternate fingering (right hand) index and middle finger.
• Keep the thumb straight behind the neck and bring it with you when you slide.

Exercise 3

The last exercise is another really cool warm-up. Here we are focusing on speed so make sure you practice this one always as the last one. Your fingers must be stretched and warm before you actually perform this exercise, so make sure you always perform it after playing the 1st and 2nd warm-up. Use the fingers recommended! Let me help you with the left-hand fingers.

• Position 1: Play that with the 134 left-hand fingers.
• Position 2: Play that with the 124 left-hand fingers.
• Position 3: Play that with 124 left-hand fingers. This is quite stretchy, so make sure you keep the thumb straight behind the neck.

One last thing!

Guys, please, practice these exercises step by step and with common sense. You can seriously damage your tendons, muscle, and fingers. If you feel any pain stop immediately. If you think you are playing the exercises wrong, drop me an email and send me some pics or a short video at contactblitzguitar@gmail.com. I am more than happy to help you with that.

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