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A Simple Warm-Up Routine For Arthritis And Finger Stiffness · The Steve Stine Podcast

• 0:36
  Steve: Hey, this is Steve Stein from Guitar Zoom Academy.
• 0:38
  Steve: If you're one of those people that struggles with, you know, arthritis or just, you know, whatever it might be, stiffness in your fingers, you know, any kind of thing that you deal with when you first start trying to play in the mornings or whenever it is you grab the guitar, there's a couple things I want you to think about.
• 0:53
  Steve: First of all, is your mindset.
• 0:55
  Steve: When you first grab the guitar for the day, don't expect to be at your top level.
• 1:00
  Steve: Okay?
• 1:01
  Steve: You got to work into that.
• 1:03
  Steve: And so what I found as I get older is I've got to do what I call pre-practice before I actually get to my practice.
• 1:09
  Steve: I have to warm up both my mind and my body to get to where I want to be with my playing.
• 1:13
  Steve: It's a very common thing.
• 1:15
  Steve: Most people do it.
• 1:16
  Steve: And so what I want you to think about is when you first are going to practice for the day, the first thing you could do is just some basic warm-up routines.
• 1:23
  Steve: Okay.
• 1:23
  Steve: The first thing that I would do, and again, I know a lot of people don't do these sorts of things, but the first thing I do is stretching.
• 1:30
  Steve: That's one of the biggest things that I do, and I do this throughout the day, is just stretching.
• 1:34
  Steve: And I'm not going to show you just a ton of different exercises for stretching, just basic things that you can do.
• 1:40
  Steve: For instance, just pressing like this and stretching out your muscles and your tendons.
• 1:46
  Steve: Okay?
• 1:47
  Steve: You can do that this direction.
• 1:50
  unknown: Okay.
• 1:51
  Steve: You hold each one for 10, 15 seconds, that sort of thing.
• 1:54
  Steve: Then you can do this direction.
• 1:56
  Steve: Stretch out this stuff right here.
• 1:58
  Steve: Okay?
• 2:00
  Steve: Again, and you can do those throughout the day.
• 2:01
  Steve: You're sitting around, you know, you just do this.
• 2:05
  Steve: Okay?
• 2:08
  Steve: And then this.
• 2:09
  Steve: Okay?
• 2:10
  Steve: One of my favorites is to do this.
• 2:11
  Steve: I'll put my hands together like this, tips, palms together, and then you drop this down so it's kind of centered in front of you like this.
• 2:19
  Steve: You don't want it up here and you don't need it, you know, way down here.
• 2:21
  Steve: Just kind of centered in front of you like this.
• 2:23
  Steve: Try and keep the palms together if you can.
• 2:26
  Steve: And what you do is you try and take your elbow and you push it straight out, not up, but straight out towards the wall, like this.
• 2:34
  Steve: So you're sitting like this, and you're not gonna do this.
• 2:36
  Steve: You're gonna literally press straight out toward the wall.
• 2:39
  Steve: It's one of the best stretches that I do.
• 2:42
  Steve: Okay?
• 2:42
  Steve: You can feel it pull all the way through here.
• 2:46
  Steve: If you do this, you're not gonna feel that.
• 2:48
  Steve: Okay.
• 2:48
  Steve: But if you keep the palms together, you drop it down, and then you press straight out toward the wall.
• 2:53
  Steve: It's a really good exercise, really good stretch to do.
• 2:56
  Steve: So just some basic things like that to try and get warmed up.
• 2:59
  Steve: Run your hands under some warm water if you need to, your forearms under some water, warm water.
• 3:03
  Steve: Anything to get the blood flowing is really important.
• 3:06
  Steve: Um, drinking water, you know, eating something with potassium is always good, stuff like that.
• 3:12
  Steve: And now we're ready to go.
• 3:13
  Steve: So now I go to my guitar and I just start doing some basic things to get warmed up.
• 3:17
  Steve: So what I always tell people is just kind of do one of three different things, okay, each at a time.
• 3:24
  Steve: The first thing is just doing some warm-ups, some legato warmups, getting your fingers warmed up.
• 3:28
  Steve: So just doing some things where maybe you're just doing some hammer ons and pull-offs with the first and second finger, just getting them warmed up, and then first and third finger, and then first and pinky.
• 3:41
  Steve: Just doing some hammer ons, pull-offs, just getting everybody warmed up.
• 3:44
  Steve: Doesn't need to be perfect, doesn't need to sound perfect.
• 3:47
  Steve: And then you can go to your middle finger and your ring finger, and then your middle finger and your pinky.
• 3:54
  Steve: And then your ring finger and your pinky.
• 3:57
  Steve: And you can do, you know, any kind of thing you like to do.
• 3:59
  Steve: If you want to do one, three, four, or one, two, four, if there's certain exercises.
• 4:03
  Steve: Again, the point isn't strengthening right now, it's just warming up your body.
• 4:07
  Steve: That's what you're doing, is just some exercises to get your fingers moving.
• 4:11
  Steve: Okay, that's one thing you can do.
• 4:12
  Steve: Then what you can do is come over to this hand and just start doing some basic things like some down picking or some alternate picking.
• 4:21
  Steve: Just trying to get your mind going, get your hand going, whatever it might be, whatever it is you like to do.
• 4:26
  Steve: If you don't do a lot of down and alternate picking things, you do more strumming, okay.
• 4:31
  Steve: Then grab an easy song and start playing.
• 4:33
  Steve: Just get the body warmed up to whatever it is that you're doing, playing some chords, different kinds of things like that.
• 4:38
  Steve: And then you can do real basic things in terms of synchronicity with your hands.
• 4:42
  Steve: Maybe you do uh some scale work.
• 4:44
  Steve: Maybe you just like to do things like maybe you're doing some scales, or or maybe you're doing, you know, the one, two, three, four kind of thing.
• 5:02
  Steve: You know, anything like that.
• 5:03
  Steve: But again, the the goal right now is to pre-practice, it's to warm up.
• 5:07
  Steve: It's not how fast you are, it's just trying to get everything warmed up.
• 5:11
  Steve: And I'll do that for a good 10, 15, 20 minutes before I actually start moving into my regular practice.
• 5:16
  Steve: And some of these things I'll just do throughout the day.
• 5:19
  Steve: They're just regular things that I'll practice.
• 5:20
  Steve: Like if I'm sitting around, I might do this legato stuff anytime I'm sitting around and I'm not really doing anything, but I've got my guitar in my hands.
• 5:27
  Steve: I'll just work on this kind of thing.
• 5:29
  Steve: Again, mindless.
• 5:30
  Steve: I'm I'm not really trying to focus on anything particular.
• 5:33
  Steve: I'm just trying to get myself warmed up.
• 5:34
  Steve: So hopefully that helps you, gives you some ideas of some things that you can do.
• 5:37
  Steve: So stay positive, keep practicing.
• 5:40
  Steve: If you do feel like you need more help, if you're stuck in your guitar playing and you love playing guitar and you wish you could actually get to the places you'd want to be able to go, head over to guitarzoom.com.
• 5:49
  Steve: We can talk about the Guitar Zoom Academy, see if it's something that fits you.
• 5:52
  Steve: All right.
• 5:53
  Steve: So take care, and I'll talk to you soon.