How do you warm up?

Playing Technique
#1

Hello!

I have a simple question: How do you usually warm your right hand up?
I am asking because I have a big problem with my playing since several months.
On 50% of the days I am practicing everything is fine. Picking feels absolutely fine and smooth. On good days I am cracking 240bpm 16th notes on a single string. The picking motion gets so small that I barely notice any movement anymore.

On the other 50%, I pick up my guitar and suddenly I feel like I forgot how to play over night. I still get up to 200bpm, but the movement feels sloppy and not economical. On this days I also have bigger problems skipping strings. Sometimes this is very frustrating and I put the guitar back very quick. If I keep practicing, sometimes it is just fine after half an hour or more, sometimes it stays that way and I stop practicing after some time, because it feels like I am fighting against the strings.

I almost feel like this is more a problem of hand positioning rather than proper warm up. But I keep inspecting my hand and arm carefully, even made videos and pictures of myself when I played better. And I can’t see where this huge difference comes from.

Regarding warm up, I usually start directly with practicing without warm up exercises, although I start really slow, so you could call it warm up, just without the exercises dedicated to this task.

1 Like
#2

How many hours day do you practice?

How many years have you been playing?

I found that after playing a lot of years, I have a lot less off days, but when I was younger I had the same problem you describe.

I just play rhythm guitar for 15 or 20 minutes as a warm up before I do any lead playing.

#3

I think I play for roughly ten years now, but I am not completely sure. Could also be nine…
I try to play everyday, but because of work and university there are usually one or two days a week where I don’t have time because I am either too late at home and don’t want to disturb anyone, or I am simply too tired.
If I have time, I try to practice at least an hour each day. But of course, some time of this hour is dedicated to just playing stuff. So the real time where I focus on learning or improving licks/riffs etc. is at least half an hour.

On some days, esp. weekends, I have more time and dedicate two or more hours to guitar playing and practicing.

What I noticed often is, that practicing in the morning is worse than evening. If I practice after I get home from work or so I often don’t have so much problems like when I try to practice Saturday morning.

#4

I would think that’s most likely because later in the day when you’ve been awake for a long time, just normal daily activities warm up your muscles, at least to a degree. When you first wake up, your body isn’t warmed up at all since you’ve been stationary for 6 to 8 hours.

You’ve been playing enough years that I think you’ll start seeing more consistency and have less bad days before much longer.

#5

Yes this is most likely, didn’t think about this before.

What I should add (probably really important): I completely turned my way of picking around at the beginning of this year.
Formerly I anchored my hand and used Jazz III picks. My picking looked a little bit like that of Alexi Laiho. I got pretty fast but never felt like “I could play everything”. This was also before I discovered pickslanting.
I then decided to completely change things and move to a not anchored hand like Paul Gilbert does. I practiced this for a month or so and it felt pretty weird, but insanely I decided to stick to it.
After some time it made “click” and I could pick faster and cleaner than ever. But it is still not consistent.

I think there was a slight progress in consistency since then, but maybe you are right and I should keep practicing and it will get more consistent eventually.

Sorry for my german english!

#6

No problem! You write quite well.

Here is a song that I used to play as a warm up - especially the main riff. It’s a pretty good warm up for the right hand!

#7

For me, warming up is essential for picking. Not just to get the blood flowing, and to get your muscles relaxed, but also, you have to ‘fine-tune’ your mechanic. Kinda like a singer that does the ‘me me me me me’, you have to go through your motions, and adjust things that are off. I like warming up at around 130 bpm 16ths, so that I can really see what’s going on.

There are some great warmup exercises that you can do. Depending on your mechanic. But I like to stick with odd time-signature stuff, 3/4 or 5/4 stuff. Patterns that force you to switch your accenting between up-stroking and down-stroking. I really try and get to an ‘equilibrium’ state where I feel like I have no bias at all towards any direction.