Slow warm ups, good or nah?

Playing Technique
#1

Hello! Sorry I placed the topic on the wrong category at first. Putting it here now. I’ve been doing the MAB warm ups for a few years now and have added other stuff over time, but that’s like my main thing as far as warming up. He emphasizes warming up slowly for starters to prevent injury. And he does a lot of even numbered groupings like two notes per string and four. I have found that even though I’m a DSX player at fast speeds, when playing/warming up slow I might play some exercises that if I would do them at fast speeds, it would require a different motion than my primary motion. For example, the classic four notes per string chromatic exercise starting on a downstroke that I do for warm up, at fast speeds or faster speeds it would actually require USX or DBX, so if I actually wanted to play it fast I would have to do it starting on an upstroke in order to get the DSX string change, but playing slow I guess I’m doing some sort of double escape motion or some sort of slow USX motion that I don’t do when actually playing fast, so I’m wondering if warming up this way is actually counterproductive and actually might create inefficiency or bad habits that don’t help when actually playing at fast speeds, maybe I should do the exercises in a way that’s closer to how I would do at fast speeds? Any opinions on this?

This is kinda the stuff that I do as my main warm up:

#2

I’d say this is wise. Warming up should be some realistic representation of what you’re actually going to do, so using a USX exercise when you’re really DSX could, as you say, be counterproductive.

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#3

As a guitar teacher that knows as much as I do now about motion mechanics, the “typical” guitar warm ups of 1234 chromatics and CAGED major scales with strict alternate picking give me like an existential crisis hahaha.

I’ve come to the realization that for the vast majority of guitarists (ie players that aren’t trying to pick anything very fast at all in most of the music they play) these types of warm ups are probably just fine and will probably give them some degree of right hand control and hand sync with the left. I only ever take students down the escape motion worm-hole if I see they’re a serious lead player or into genres like metal, prog, etc. where you’ll inevitably hit road blocks if you’re not aware of these things.

MAB is probably just recycling the same advice his guitar teacher gave him back in the day because it probably did provide him the basic facilities I mentioned above when he was starting out.

I will also add that slow practice to warm up could probably have a “calming” or “relaxing” effect on the nervous system, so when you do kick in to full gear you’re starting with much less (or optimally no) background tension than if you just dove right in.

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#4

Yep thank you very much been testing it recently definitely makes my DSX a lot better for actually playing fast.

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