Читать книгу Guitar Exercises For Dummies - Jon Chappell - Страница 22

Before you even pick up the guitar to practice, you may want to open and close your hands a couple of times to stretch the muscles and tendons. Make a tight fist and then open your hands wide, splaying your straightened fingers. Then make a fist with both hands and rotate them from the wrist in a circular motion. These simple exercises help stretch out the back of the hand where a lot of tension can develop, especially when reaching out of position with your fingers or playing barre chords (chords where a finger covers more than one string).

If you feel like doing some more stretching, we have a few more activities for you to try. However, proceed carefully with the first two activities because overdoing any type of stretching can cause injury.

 Try placing the tips of your extended fingers against your opposite forearm and press down gently to arch the fingers backward slightly. You can do this with individual fingers by simply placing one finger against your forearm and letting the others fall forward naturally. This backward-bending of the fingers, either as a group or individually, helps counteract all that opposite-motion curling of the fingers that you do in normal playing. It’s kind of like the way you might stand up tall and stretch your spine backward after stooping over for a while in the yard or garden.

 Give your hands a workout by squeezing and releasing a tennis ball. This type of ball is just the right size and springiness for guitar playing! But, if you prefer, you can grab an exercise device like a Gripmaster, which is designed specifically for working the finger muscles.

 Warm up your hands by washing them in warm water. Yup, that’s right. Doing so literally warms up the hands (heat facilitates blood flow). Plus washing obviously cleans your hands, which is always a good thing to do before touching your guitar.