Guitar Basics

Warming up

Few guitarists warm up before they play. Many even laugh at thought of warming up. However, in the long run, they will develop problems such as arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome and strains. All of these problems will destroy your guitar playing sessions and could have been easily avoided with just a few warm ups. It doesn’t take long to do these simple warm up exercises.

You want to warm up your fingers and forearms, these are where your tendons are. These tendons have major strain put on them while playing the guitar so its best to get them warmed up before you start playing. There are two major exercises that I recommend before starting.

Extensions

Hold your fretting hand’s arm out straight and take your picking hand and gently push your fretting hand down. Keeping the fretting hand fingers together and the hand straight, do this stretching extension slowly. From side view, your fretting hand fingers should be pointing down. Hold this position for a moment then wiggle it out. Next you want to do the opposite and take your picking hand and pull up on your fretting hand. Again keep your arm and fretting hands fingers straight. Now your fingers should be pointing to the sky. Hold again for a moment and then wiggle it out.

Rolls.

You should do this to both hands. This exercise is a bit simpler. Close your hands into a fist and rotate your hands from the wrist in a mini circle a couple of time. However do this slowly and comfortably. The idea is just to loosen up, not strain yourself. After doing a few circles with your fretting hand try your picking hand. Now we are done with are warm ups.

Holding the guitar correctly.

First let’s start out with how you should hold the guitar. Here are the major key points you want to follow to correctly hold the guitar:
You want to keep your back as straight as possible while playing the guitar. Just as your parents tell you “sit up straight!” you want to do the same while playing the guitar. Slouching while playing the guitar is horrible for your back and will not only cause physical damage to your body but also impede your progression as a guitar player.

When playing guitar, you want to avoid looking down too much. Yes its difficult to play guitar without looking at your fingers, however try to avoid this as much as possible. Having your head and neck hunched over the guitar while you are playing is a common vice many beginners have. Again this not only puts a damper on your guitar playing in the long run, but does major havoc on your back.

Keep your wrists as straight as possible. You do not want to arch your wrists too much as this will cause carpal tunnel syndrome! Again, this is a major mistake many guitarists starting out have. The key is playing slowly and correctly, think of it as exercise, you don’t want to work your body out with bad posture, nor play guitar that way.

Most importantly, try to find a comfortable position, yet use good posture, while playing guitar. Many guitars are just built different. There are hundreds of body styles to guitars and you wouldn’t hold all of them the same. The key is to be comfortable while playing, just remember to keep your neck, back and wrists straight!

Holding the guitar is probably one of the most important aspects to playing. 99% of your playing and practice sessions will involve you sitting down and playing the guitar. If you were to practice an hour a day for a year, that’s 365 hours of sitting down holding the guitar. Can you imagine if you weren’t comfortable or straining your body during that amount of time? The key to a great practice session is in the way you hold the guitar. Remember this fact and apply the items I have listed above.