Giving your Hands a Workout

Did you realise that if you spend hours practicing incorrectly, you can actually waste hours doing damage to your hands and limiting your potential? Its true. Now, I’m not a doctor, but it shouldn’t take a medical professional to tell you that using your muscles incorrectly, will strain the muscles in a way that they are not designed for. Too much of this, and it becomes known as RSI or repetitive strain injury- a condition that could end your musical career! This is why I’ve compiled this list of exercises and techniques to help strengthen the muscles of the hand- in no particular order.

The Elastic Band

This is a trick I actually learnt off a bass player. The idea is that you place an elastic band around your fingers (on the outside, across all of them), and then you slowly try to open your hand. This action pushes outwards on the elastic- providing resistance. The elastic band exercise is actually working the opposite muscles to the ones that you use playing guitar- but that’s important because all muscle groups work in pairs.

Putty Between Fingers

Ok, this one may seem a bit crazy- but trust me, it helps! All you do is take some putty and place it between your fingers, then you try to push your fingers together against the putty. The putty is just there for resistance and you could really use anything with a similar toughness. This exercise strengthens the intrinsic hand muscles (located in your hand, between your fingers)- this is a much underrated muscle group and is key to moving your fingers independently of one another.

Making a Fist

I know many of you, if you’ve read to this point, think that I seem to have missed out the muscles of the forearm- well I haven’t! A similar idea to the previous techniques, Clench your hand into a tight fist and then stretch it out so that your fingers are far apart. This will not only use the muscles of the forearm, but it is also a great way to get rid of any tensions that you’ve built up in your arm or hand.

Wide Interval stretching Exercises

If you’ve seen my blog post on wide interval stretches (view it here) you’ll know about this one. Doing fretting exercises with any amount of stretching- so that you can feel the stretch- is working right on the muscles at the base of the fingers. These muscles will eventually grow (as any muscle will, with exercise) and your fingers will actually grow further apart. Concentrate on the stretch, not your speed. Start on the smaller frets (down by the pickups) and make sure that you can hit each note cleanly before slowly moving the exercise down to the wider frets (nearer the nut). This will eventually make you faster at reaching (and therefore, playing) the frets because you will take less time stretching your hand to reach them.

Finger Combinations

For picking exercises, especially those mentioned above, getting the most out of them requires creativity. The theory is that you will increase your finger independence and hand stretch, or at least aim to do so! The important element in the equation is not speed! The important thing to remember is that your are working on the dexterity of your hands. Therefore its important to continuously change the order that you use your fingers in. For example, if you play an exercise on the first four frets that goes: 1 2 3 4, try playing it as: 1 4 2 3. Will the frets you play change? yes. Will it be confusing at first? Yes, but will it help your dexterity? Without doubt- YES!

String Skipping

Same as above, but instead of your fingers just moving along the string, they will also be moving across the strings. The more ways you can stretch those fingers, the better the exercise because the more muscles you’re working. Try this- play along the frets 5 6 7 8 on the low E string, then switch to whichever string you can get to whilst also keeping in time to the metronome! See if you can reach the high E string in time! You can also combine this exercise and the last one- try starting on the low E string playing 5 7 8 6 (one finger per fret, no cheating!), and then skipping a string of two. Now set the metronome as fast as you dare- or can play without sounding sloppy!

Legato

How did it take me so long to get to this one?! Try playing trills (quickly hammering on and then pulling off) between each pair of fingers- and see how long you can keep it up for! Try 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes- if you have that much time, that is. This works best on heavier strings (because they require greater muscle strength), but you can use any gauge as long as each note is the same volume. This will greatly improve your dexterity and hand strength, because all the energy for the sound is coming directly from your fingers!

…And Finally

This has been quite a long list, but its by no means comprehensive. There are so many other techniques and exercises other than the ones I’ve presented here. One final exercise that is actually really tricky to do, but once you get
the hang of it its probably one of the best I know for finger independence. Right, this is how you do it- play a note (say the A on the 5th fret E string) with the first finger, then play exactly the same note, on the same fret, with the second finger, then with the third, then the forth. The fun is to see how fast you can play this one note whilst swapping between all the fingers. You don’t even need to use the order 1 2 3 4, you can try different combinations, as I mentioned above- but all on this one note. Try it, its so tricky at first!

As with every exercise, start all of these off slowly, and ALWAYS practice to a metronome! The goal here is dexterity and finger independence, not speed.

For private tuition, please contact me for one to one lessons!

Remember: I am not a doctor- nor do I claim to be one! The information provided here is for guitar playing purposes only. If you experience serious pain while trying these exercises consult a medical professional immediately!

November 6, 2009 at 12:00 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises, Practicing and Practice Routine | No comments