Warm Up Hints When Learning Guitar in Middle Age

If you are learning the guitar in middle age it takes awhile each time you play for your fingers to start responding to what your brain is telling them to do. This isn’t because you are “old”. You just need to warm up like any other guitarist. For maximum progress in minimum time establish and follow a repeatable warm up routine.

Repeatability allows you to judge where you are in terms of flexibility as compared to previous sessions. Your warm up period will give you the feedback to let you know when you’re limbered up enough to start pushing harder. Properly warmed up you will get more benefit out of each playing session as well as avoid injury.

If you pick up your guitar and pound out the intro to Dragonforce's “Through the Fire and Flames” at 200 bpm (transcription in the May Guitar World) as your warm up you may strain something regardless of age. “No pain no gain” doesn’t apply here. If you’re warming up and things aren’t clicking, avoid the pain but get the gain by just doing something else for 10 minutes and coming back to it. You will be amazed at the difference.