its general consensus that stretching (your fingers and wrists) before playing guitar prevents injury and prepares you for playing, same in weightlifting.but recent studies have shown that (static) stretching before squatting messes up your movement patterns which leads to suboptimal execution. this leads me to the conclusion that the same may apply to playing guitar, should we stop stretching?
Interesting… tbh I never stretch to warm up. Not for guitar and not for piano. I just start by practicing something a little less demanding and shortly after I’m warmed up.
I make sure the room is warm before I practice though, I find it helps to get warmed up quicker.
I’d love to see Troy do a Myth Busters section of short clips that put all the dogmatic “Thou Shalts” in their place.
I’ve never stretched to warmup either. I’ve played decades of classical guitar with hellacious fret hand stretches too and as far I know, I’ve never had a guitar related injury. I guess I’m a hypocrite since the only thing worse than spreading dogma is spreading anecdotal experiences lol!
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I never stretch, just play. Same with working out, I just do whatever movement pattern I’m doing but at a much lower intensity / velocity and ramp up.
I did give myself tendinitis, twice 
, but that was a bad posture thing.
Are you SURE it wasn’t just because you weren’t stretching??? Jk 
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can’t be certain, maybe I should start doing some aerobics
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Can anyone crosspick and do squats at the same time?
Challenge accepted
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Hey Ctc it’s Joe’s wife. I found him in the basement, collapsed on the floor with a barbell on his back, both his legs were broken and there was a guitar next to him. I didn’t ask. Not sure how the accident happened. The barbell was only 30lbs.
He won’t be posting for awhile though due to the injury.
(And the crowd goes wild!!!)
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If I had an SSB I’d definitely try
I’d make a difference between static and dynamic stretches. I do like warming up with dynamic stretches on guitar since playing the instrument does involve… dynamic stretches. Something like somewhat complex fingering patterns played at a decent enough speed, including position changes and whatnot. In more unusual warm-ups, I recall of a concert pianist that warmed up his arms before a gig by playing table tennis before actually touching the instrument.
You make it sound as if the two aren’t related or intertwined.
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well inflation and these gas prices are killing my gains. 
I talked about this with an awesome massage therapist, and he agrees that you shouldn’t do static stretching before playing, but the key part there is static. He recommends active stretching before playing, static stretching afterwards.
And if you’re like, “Active, static, what does that mean?” It means this:
Before playing, do quick, active stretches - only hold for a few seconds, alternate hands/arms each time. You want to get warmed up and get the blood flowing without really stretching out the muscle fibers.
After playing, do long, static stretches - hold a stretch for 30 seconds, release for a few seconds, repeat 2 more times, then switch hands/arms and do the same for the other one. This is your cooldown, where you take the tension out and stretch out the muscle fibers that just got a workout and want to tighten up.
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Rippetoe, et al., have been saying for many years that stretching is pointless as it has a deleterious impact on force production. The movements themselves provide sufficient “stretching,” i.e., making the body accommodate to the required effective ranges of motion.
I’ve been in and out of PT and OT for years for hand issues - first biggest mistake I made was overstretching. Too much and too hard. Definitely made things worse. Now I just stretch when I feel like I need it.
Myofascial release with a lacrosse ball or other tool is really useful.
From what I’ve learned stretching is to be done after work.
The muscle contracts best unstreched, if you stretch you’re acually pulling the mechanical “filaments” apart. And they have less surface area to work with.
If you look up muscle contraction on Google or youtube you can see a visual for the basic idea.
If you stretch you are basically pulling apart the top example, and it then has less area to grip onto.
Though honestly idk if this will effect playing much, as the forces we are working with at a decent level of skill are very minimal. It’s not like squatting 150KG. Where steaching would mess you up a bit.
The issue is more likely about accuracy of motion, and in my experience, you adapt really fast to whatever force you’re able to apply that day. It’s the same as changing your pick, string height or your mouse dpi, you adapt in a few minutes and continue to get a feel for that new action, idk if it’s something to worry about.
And actually it might even be a positive if you do it sometimes and others not, as different ranges of motion increase the brains need for adaptation. I often wish I could instantly change the guitar scale string size and pick type on the fly as it does increase adaptation and learning. Randomly stretching could be a way to do this.