Just like with going to the gym, a warm up is an integral part of you daily guitar playing. Now I know what you’re thinking, “I just wanna pick my guitar up and play!”…and I hear you. If you’re anything like me (lazy), for the longest time I would jump into playing without warming either hand up and then inevitably got frustrated when my playing wasn’t fast enough or my hands weren’t working together. But every now and then I’d spend 2 – 5 minutes working through a couple of exercises and immediately I noticed a huge difference when I got to playing the fun stuff. After years of laziness, I’ve managed to cultivate a few different fun exercises to run through that are short and sweet to combat my laziness and short attention span. Implementing one of these as soon as you pick your trusty axe up will actually help propel you as a guitar player more than you probably realised.
So, without further ado, here is a perfect 2 minute warm up routine with exercises you can run through that won’t sound like nails down a blackboard. We’ll be focusing on these main techniques: alternate picking, and string skipping.