Warming-Up has a reputation for being the least glamorous and most boring portion of playing. At least that’s they way that I felt about it until I really discovered how to maximise its potential.

Let’s first dispell a few myths. Most people think warm-ups are

• Non-musical
• Purely Physical
• Not part of the practice process
• Technique focussed
• Optional

All of these are wrong!

Another thing that you maybe hadn’t considered is that warming-up is unavoidable. To put it simply; at some point in your day you transition from not playing the guitar to playing the guitar. As you make that transition yout body goes through an acclimatisation phase. Your muscles go from relaxed to working, your focus goes from what you’re having for lunch to trying to working out tritone subs on the bridge of rhythm changes.

This is going to happen whether you like it or not, so the question is…

Are you going to acclimatiase quickly and maximise the potential of your practice session?

There’s also the added bonus of reducing risk of injury/strain and we haven’t even got into the actual technical and musical progress that your warming-up can cause.

Let’s start with a mindset shift, from here on we will refer to the “Warm Up” as the “Bridging Phase”.

Bridging Phase: The first phase of a practice session that seeks to incorporate elements of productive practice with the goal of preparing yourself for the later phases of the practice session. Bridging the gap from daily activitiy to focussed practice.

The Bridging Phase has very clear objectives called RAMP

R = Raise Temperatue.

A = Activate

M = Mobilise

P = Potentiate

RAISE TEMPERATE

This is simple, cold muscles don’t contract well. This usually isn’t a huge temperature change, but if you’re playing outside or you’ve just come in from the cold then you will definitely need to slowly raise your temperature. There’s a few reasons why this helps, the simplest is to understand is that nerves carry electrical impulses to our muscle fibers. When we can raise the temperate of our bodies we reduce the resistance that those electrical impulses have to deal with as they travel to the muscles.

Activate

This is where we start to engage the specific muscles required to play. This isn’t actually that complicated as we can simply start playing to do this, but it’s important to remember that this takes time. We can’t have the expectation of great technical playing right away, don’t get frustrated and be forgiving of lazy fingers at the start.

Mobilise

Although the whole body is involved with playing, when we are looking to mobilise during a practice session we are specifically looking at the wrists and fingers. The guys who are really bearing the brunt of the work. Whole body mobilisations (especially spine, hip and shoulders) are incredibly important but should be part of your health and fitness regimen and are less necessary at the start of practice.

Playing the guitar requires a lot of strength in the fingers, executed repeatedly in a very small range. This is a quick way to get overuse, repetitive strain, or other joint issues. Performing some Controlled Articular Rotations (C.A.RS) can help your fingers perform as well as maintain their health.

Potentiate

Potentiation is the process of preparing your nervous system to fire at the required potential. This means using some intensity AKA speed. A few speed bursts at the end of your warm-up is all that is required but remember SPECIFICTY IS KING!

If you’re not doing a highly technical practice session then you don’t need to potentiate as much.

Okay, so that’s the science sorted, however that’s just half of the influencing factors on exercises selection. We can satisfy all of our RAMP criteria and actually do our playing and musicianship harm.

Let’s remember that we are artists as well as athletes and start thinking about how we can improve our musicianship during our bridging phase.

Here’s a list of things that are easy to develop whilst not being warmed up

• Ear-Instrument connection
• Control of musculare tension and reducing it
• Fretting finger accuracy
• Picking hand accuracy and motion
• Intra-Hand Co-ordination (Left and RIght hand Synchronisation)
• Control of right and left hand dynamics (picking volume, pull of volume etc)
• Ear Training
• Timbral Control (Exploring pick placement and angles)
• Fretboard Knowledge
• Changes Playing
• Repetoire eg learning standards
• Posture
• Tone

There are so many incredible things we can work on whilst Bridging. We don’t have to play 10 minutes of spider exercises that have no carry over to our playing.

The idea that we have to warm up so that we can practice is not only outdated but it promotes the idea that your technical ability is directly linked to every practice session.

There’s also a lot more to practice than technique and we also can’t expert perfect technique every time we practice. In fact some days our muscles will need a day off from technical strain.

so our new mindset is …

Warming up is practice.

Warming up is a chance to improve and develop

So how do we put this into action?

Well, it’s really down to you as long as you cover all the bases of the RAMP warm up.

The simplest warm up you can do that will yield great results is playing arppegios chromatically up the neck. Starting slow and doing all of the following

• Focus on accuracy. Play slow enough so your hands can be in the right place at the right time.
• Sing the root of the arpeggio whilst you play it.
• Try and imagine the sound of the next note before you play it.
• Strive for an even, consistent volume and tone at first.
• Slowly build up speed.
• Listen as intently as possibly.

Once you’ve done this with a few arpeggios you can practice some scales and chords. Then look ahead at what your plan is for the practice session. Divise some low level exercises that will prepare you for the fingering and picking movements that are coming up.

Linking the Bridging Phase to the material that you want to practice is another way to make your practice time a lot more efficient. That’s another reason why i prefer the term “Bridging”, its all about getting you to a destination.

FAQs

How long should a warm-up be?

This is situation specific. What is your practice routing going to be? is it highly technical? if so then a 10 minute warm up will be great for you. If your not going to be playing very technical things then you can shorten the warm up down to 5. We only need to prepare you for the task at hand. The other influence might be how cold you are going in. If your hands are ice cold then extend your warm up but include more low intensity musical practice. Like some play and sing exercises or long-tones.

I don’t have time for a warm-up, what should I do?

If you have a set amount of practice material to get through and a limited time then you have to be smart about the order and your technical expectation. Put the low-intensity activity first and understand that you might not be practicing your technical exercises as cleanly or quickly as normal. Do the best you can on the day given the circumstances.