Guitar warm up stretches aren’t the most appealing thing for people to learn about, but they are very valuable for both novices and more seasoned guitarists. Something I realised in my first ever metal guitar lesson is that whilst actively playing you end up pulling your hands and fingers into funny positions and wrist and arm complaints aren’t unheard-of.

Your hands, wrists and fingers are like every other bit of your body, and they demand regular exercising if they are to be maintained in perfect condition. As any good athlete should maintain the the parts of the body critical to his sport, you should maintain the fingers, wrists and hands if you want to extract the most from them.

Investing a couple of minutes to loosen up before you launch into practising your newest masterpiece will make certain that you keep your fingers, wrists and arms in great condition. In addition to that, you will probably discover that you are able to stretch further and play at a faster speed when you are adequately loosened up. Tools exist that you can buy to help you such as the gripmaster, however squeezing a tennis ball is essentially as good. Squeeze for a couple of minutes to get the blood flowing, after which you can progress onto stretching your fingers, wrists and arms.

Regardless of whether you are practicing challenging jazz chords, or learning the fastest heavy metal guitar riffs if you are passionate about playing guitar then it’s a good idea to stretch and exercise the hands in this fashion every single day, even if you are not playing your guitar on that particular day. Keep your tennis ball on hand and whilst you’re sat about watching TV or similar you can give your fingers some exercise. This is one way to make it really easy to keep on top of something that can be a somewhat uninteresting job. That said you mustn’t grumble about it a lot, most forms of exercise cannot be done while you are kicking back on the sofa!

After you are done your hands will certainly feel a great deal looser and after that you are ready to rock! When you are dedicated, after just a short amount of time you should find a notable improvement in your hands strength, and suppleness which will have a direct effect on both your playing and the speed you learn.