Unless you’re extremely fit and in the shape of your life,
warming up before any exercise, even one that involves the slightest bit of
physical exertion, is important. Yes, that includes playing the guitar!
Most musicians however fail to understand and realize the
importance of a proper warm-up session. Guitarists tend to simply pick up the
guitar and start cold. Right from the off, it doesn’t feel very great, and understandably,
this then leads to a lot of short-term and long-term injuries, most notable of
which are various stress- and strain-related injuries such as RSI (Repetitive
Strain Injury).
Even though playing the guitar might not seem like something
that really exerts your body, or would seemingly cause major health problems
later in your life, the fact of the matter is repetitive hand and arm movements
(such as during picking and fretting) are certain to be the cause of many
ill-effects and long-lasting damage to the body.
Needless to say, it is therefore vital to incorporate a
proper warm-up routine prior to starting to play the guitar. Not only will a
proper warm-up drastically reduce the possibility of strain injuries that are
associated with playing the guitar, it will put less strain and exertion on
certain part of your body.
This is precisely why athletes warm up and stretch before
stepping on to the field. Guitar playing, on the face of it, might not be as
physical as a 90-minute soccer match or a marathon run, but trust me, a 1-hour
jam session or a live performance will take some serious toll on your health!
Warming up will also allow you to improve your posture,
increase stamina, get your blood flowing to your fingers and forearms, and
allow you to focus on putting in a great performance, instead of cramping hands
and painful shoulders.
And a good warm-up sessions doesn’t even have to take a lot
of time. It doesn’t involve a full-on Yoga sessions or hitting the gym. All it
takes is a few exercises – both without and with your guitar.
First off, make sure that you loosen up your muscles and
joints, particularly your head, neck, shoulders, wrists, fingers, and arm
joints and muscles. Since all these part are interconnected with one another, failing
to loosen up one of these will affect your overall guitar-play.
After you’ve loosened up, grab that guitar and do some
warm-up exercises. At this point, it is important to accustom yourself to your
axe. Besides, your (wooden) guitar needs to warm up as well. For this purpose,
I recommend guitar ‘gymnastics’ exercises. There are plenty of resources
available on the internet for this purpose, as a quick Google search would
reveal. Plus plenty of stretching
exercises tailor-made for musicians and guitarists. Check the Musician’s Health
website for more details.
Like I mentioned above, even after your muscles are limber
and loose, your guitar (or whatever is your instrument of choice) also needs to
warm up, before you get straight to playing it. This too will help prevent RSI,
and allow the guitarist to become lose enough to play accurately.
It is why some of the biggest acts in the world have
incorporated warming-up sessions into their routines. Take the example of
Metallica. They performed live in in 1997 in Texas, in front of a sold-out
crowd, and began the concert (called Cunning Stunts) with a full
3-minute warm-up session! This was part of their ‘on-stage’ warm-up, their
off-stage or back-stage warm practices include stretching and loosening up with
trained professionals and chiropractors who are a part of their team and travel
with the band wherever they go anywhere in the world (‘whenever they may roam’
as James Hetfield would say!).
While you probably do not need such a high-maintenance
warm-up routine, this link to warm-up
exercises, and this
RSI-prevention guidelines will most certainly help!
Prevention is always better than cure. One musician to
another: make warm-ups a regular part of your guitar-play today!
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