What exactly is warming up? Seems like nearly everyone needs 5 or 10 or 20 minutes or sometimes more to get to their peak ability when practicing. Is it basically relaxing? What’s going on there?
Thoughts? Insights?
For me, warming up is just remembering how to play.
Mentally, it plays out something like this:
- What are these strings for again? Oh, yeah.
- How do I hold the pick? No… no… there it is.
- Wait, something’s not right. Oh yeah, make sure the pad at the base of your fretting hand index finger is touching the side of the neck most of the time… Twist your grip a little more so you can use a power grip instead of a pincher grip. Got it.
- How hard do I have to push on the strings with my fretting hand? A little less… a little more… there it is.
- How do I make the pick go back and forth again? That’s not it, too slow… closer, but not quite… no that’s worse… that’s fast enough, but the snap is missing… there is.
The only one I’m joking about is the first one.
This narration is mostly subconscious and continues throughout my playing time, but it starts to be more about advancing: learning new vocabulary or a new technique, tightening up a performance, sharpening an existing technique, expanding a fretboard map, etc. The warmup part is just about getting back to baseline and takes maybe 3 to 5 minutes.
OK I know this is controversial but my definition of warming up is “a waste of time.”
Playing guitar is not supposed to be strenuous, if it is you’re doing it wrong. Pullups actually are strenuous and I don’t bother warming up for those either, never once had a problem.
When people hurt themselves it’s always “maybe I didn’t warm up properly” not “I don’t know what I’m doing.” OK rant over . . .
I just know things get smoother for me every day after the first 10 minutes or so and I was wondering what that mechanism was exactly. I didn’t mean a deliberate warm up routine or anything. I’m just curious what physiological function is at work when things get smoother and more fluid after a few minutes. Muscles loosening? The brain relaxing the muscles? Etc.
Honestly I don’t know much about it, I mean if my hands are literally cold I can’t play at all which makes sense because my fingers are really long and thin; I remember shaking Paul Gilbert’s hand at a clinic and his fingers are a little longer than mine but not much, you’d think I’d have to warm up every time but I don’t.
My feeling is that playing guitar doesn’t require any strength and therefore doesn’t necessitate warming up; I can do pretty crazy things on a pullup bar that require about a million times the pressure needed to play guitar, it doesn’t affect my playing in any way. But people who play too hard can exert enough pressure to cause damage, my advice there is to fix the root cause of the problem.
As an example my main teaching guitar was refretted in the late 90s and I’m just crowning the frets for the first time today. And it doesn’t even really need it. And I bend like a madman, 3 and 4 fret bends all the time.
My 2 cents…
Warming up is similar to @induction’s response to me. It is a way to get your brain into playing mode, and re-aclimating yourself to the coordinations necessary to play the damn thing. So it is a mental warm up rather than a physical warm up. Obviously easy / simple coordinations probably don’t need it, but ones that require finer movements might need it. And I don’t think it requires any special exercise, just to play, and reconnect with the instrument.
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Warming up for me is just locking into my picking motion. I have maybe 94% of my ability from the moment I start picking but over the next few minutes I feel more locked in maybe to 96% and over the course of the next 5mins I’m closer to 100% with things I attempt feeling the most fluid.
This 
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Warming up for me is just picking up the instrument and playing what ever I feel like playing. It could be “the rain song” - that’s a good one! it could be (as of lately) the acoustic intro to “incarus dream suit”, it could be just plinking away at something mindlessly or remembering a song I heard in a dream. Or sometimes is a needlessly fast picking thing or economy or sweep. Sometimes it’s just picking up the guitar and holding it on my lap and admiring it.
I don’t think of warming up as a prelude to an athletic performance. Do that when you work on your stage moves. because if there’s one thing that’s certain, most virtuoso performers are boring AF to watch live.
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This is actually a good correlation to guitar I think! I can do pullups pretty easy as long as my fingers are warm, but I definitely need to warm up before doing one arm pullups, which are close to my upper limit, and which some consider an “advanced” skill.
Similarly, I’m guessing most “advanced” players can pick up the guitar and play something that is pretty hard and impressive to those not on their level, but they probably need some warming up before playing something that is near their upper limit.
This has me wondering what all you’re doing on a bar lol
This is definitely it for me, with some physical warming up as well!
Ha, if you can do one arm pullups you can do anything I can do, those things are brutal! I like skin-the-cats, front lever half-lays, that kind of thing. I’m like a kid, I love climbing on stuff I’m not supposed to. If exercise isn’t fun I don’t do it, just like practicing!
I see it just like fitness, you are doing what you would do in a workout or similar but at a lower intensity to prepare your nervous system and muscles and get ready to work. Basically it should enhace everything that comes after that. Remember it’s not just muscles, your nervous system and your brain is what drives those muscles, so for me I find it good to re establish those neural paths aswell. And I normally shred so I don’t like going all in right away specially if I haven’t been playing lately, I find the more you play, the less you need to warm up but I also need rest so there’s that. I just use MAB warm up exercises, tremolo exercise and philsophy and I add my own things to it, as I start feeling good I start playing faster I don’t force the intesity if I’m not feeling, gotta be intuitive and adaptive aswell, adjust to your circumstances, you might need more or less some days or some days you might not play that good, just remember we are humans not machines. Just kinda find what works for you, and experiment a little bit and listen to your body. There’s not a one size fit all answer.
As far as I know, warming up is going through learnt motions to see if your body is ok, and not got some random tightness that might mess you up , literally warming up heat wise, and bringing in the nervous system to a tight point of action, so focusing in on a movement and making sure there are no cramps or strange deviations in your regular form.
It is far less important in guitar playing vs squatting 300kg.
Strong recommend for checking out climbing if you haven’t already, lol
Yeah the trouble is there’s this weird focus on using these teeny tiny little pebbles glued to a wall, I wish there were other options. Lately I started working out in the early morning at a local elementary school, they have two jungle gyms and one of them works well for pullups. Of course I wound up climbing all over the jungle-gym and there’s this thingy with a handle suspended on a track, you launch yourself off one platform and slide to the other, suspended in midair doing a highkick or whatever and I’m like "why don’t they make these for adults?! Plus bouldering studios are crazy expensive . . .
Warm up just feels nice but you don’t necessarily need it to play a fast line. If you need to play for an hour before you can even try to play fast, then your technique is not working as well as it could.
It’s a method of relaxation for me. I’m a comp bodybuilder which causes a fair amount of issues with the guitar. Twitchy fatigued muscles most days of the week, larger muscles making ergonomics more difficult and also the effects of twitchy muscles worse.
It’s absolutely necessary for me to sit down and play for a few minutes, simple, confidence boosting lines, in order to relax and get into a state I can play. It also lets me evaluate if I’m even in a state to play that day. Practice while excessively fatigued results in engraining poor habits, a couple minutes with a metronome and it becomes pretty obvious if it’s time to take a day off.