3 Minutes Warmup

Hi there GMC :) Welcome to 3 Minutes Warmup.

First few words on warming up, why it is important to do it?
Some direct benefits from warming up are as follows:
- more efficient movement of joints
- increased force and speed and muscle contraction
That means with the proper warmup you can play guitar better than without it, and you can prevent cold muscles and joints of being injured by forcing them.

I used to play chromatic scales to warm up for many years, and they are great for warming up fingers, but they have one deficiency, the chromatic ups and downs do not require to be focused and to warm up your mind. You can play chromatic scales and watch TV, think about something, etc..so you are not really focused on what you are doing.

And I was thinking what to do to warm up my mind along with fingers, and designed these different patterns that require to be focused while practicing. Since chromatic scale is great for fingers I took is a base and developed the patterns with different time signatures.

The first pattern is 1-2-3-4 4-3-2-1 in 4/8
The second is 1-2-1-2-3-4 4-3-2-1-2-1 in 6/8
The third is 1-2-3-2-3-4 4-3-2-3-2-1 in 6/8
The fourth is 1-2-3-4-3-4 4-3-4-3-2-1 in 6/8
The fifth is 1-2-1-2-3-2-3-4 4-3-2-3-2-1-2-1 in 8/8
The sixth is 1-2-3-2-3-4-3-4 4-3-4-3-2-3-2-1 in 8/8
The seventh is 1-2-1-2-3-4-3-4 4-3-4-3-2-1-2-1 in 8/8
The eight is 1-2-1-2-3-2-3-4-3-4 4-3-4-3-2-3-2-1-2-1 in 10/8

To play this you really have to focus, for me it helps me to clear my mind, not only for guitar playing, but also when doing something else and my mind gets foggy I take a guitar (one is always nearby) and play this exercise to clear it :)

I recorded the backing tracks in many different tempos so you can pick the one that's best for you. I usually play it at 110 bpm and it accidentally happened that the exercise lasts 3 minutes so that's how I figured out the name for the lesson.

So, this is my way to warm up, I hope you may find it useful, or it may inspire you to develop your own warmup exercise :)

Have fun :)

Dejan