Left Hand / Right Hand exercises? Yes Or No

[Ting Ho Dung]

I have always been a believer in finger exercises even though, like regular exercise, I tend to avoid it. The summer Brandon turned 15 his brother died and I was doing everything I could to keep him busy and somewhat happy. I took him to Guitar Center pretty often and each time he went through the door he had to go touch the Zakk Wylde Epi. So I bought him one and got him his first guitar lessons. His guitar teacher wanted to teach him out of Mel Bay books. I asked the teacher if he could give him some strengthening and speed exercises. He said he was not a fan of exercises that strength and speed would come as Brandon progressed through the books. Needless to say, lessons didn't last through the summer.

I recently came across a DVD by Mark Tremonti where he talks about his legato. He says Michael Angelo B-what-ever, or one of those speed demons showed him some exercises that would improve his legato. He says doing the exercises improved his legato impressively. So each morning while I watch CBS This Morning I try to run through a few exercises. At first I could barely do them even with the first finger and middle (my favorite) finger. By the end of two weeks, my ring and pinky finger are even working somewhat and my first two fingers are fairly speedy. I've also included some stretching exercises I found online. I think those are important in advancing age to keep from injury. What about you. What's your shizzle?

[silentman]

John Petrucci's Rock Discipline has some great warmups and exercises.

[BlueRedWhite]

John Petrucci's Rock Discipline has some great warmups and exercises.

+1

and yes, it works

[Feynman]

What I like to do at the beginning of each week is to plan out a couple of goals, then visit various techniques for accomplishing them. I try to include a few songs that incorporate those ideas as well, in order to keep it more interesting. Once the plan is sketched out I begin my practice session with the first task on the list, get frustrated in a couple of minutes, then go to my computer and browse gutiars for sale on the HFC.

[shredmeister]

I jammed with a guy for 10 years who went to Berkley. He use to say practice guitar like you would approach a sport like weight lifting. He showed me some exercises to do and I incoporated many more that I found along the way.

I typically will do 1/2 warm up that includes legato exercises among other things. I have a very standard routine I do every day. I can't tell you how much of a difference and improvement these will make in your playing. It takes time. Like months and years. Some stuff took me years to get perfect.

If you really want to get proficient on guitar this is how it is done - warming up and working out the fingers with exercises.

You will not get the same benefits just by playing songs. You have to take a systematic and purposeful approach.

Couple other things to keep you healthy - don't use 11's. I don't care what the cork sniffers say they are hard on your hands and joints.

Second practice once in a while by taking your thumb completely off the neck - no thumb pressure. Eventually you will develop a lighter and quicker touch but this is mainly to aleviate arthritis in the joint. I have seen many many people have thumb issues cause they use too much unecessary pressure. You don't need it. By doing this you will eventually learn to lessen the pressure when you play. This also helps eliminate tension in the other fingers.

[Ting Ho Dung]

Second practice once in a while by taking your thumb completely off the neck - no thumb pressure. Eventually you will develop a lighter and quicker touch but this is mainly to aleviate arthritis in the joint. I have seen many many people have thumb issues cause they use too much unecessary pressure. You don't need it. By doing this you will eventually learn to lessen the pressure when you play. This also helps eliminate tension in the other fingers.

That's a great idea. I'm going to try that. Here is a video I picked up a while back and I try to do these stretches while warming up and throughout the day.

http://youtu.be/TSrfB7JIzxY