Best Guitar Warm Up Exercise Ever?

The best Warm Up Ever…

I found a fantastic guitar warmup exercise on YouTube today and wanted to share it with you all. It’s an arpeggio-style routine built over an A Major shape, and it’s excellent for dialling in your picking accuracy and fretboard synchronization. A big shoutout and thanks to Ray Wood for putting this together!

I liked the exercise so much that I sat down and wrote out the tablature for you. You can download the PDF directly here: Warm-up Skips on the Way Up.

Why bother with a structured warmup? It’s easy to skip the warmup and dive straight into your favorite songs, but taking just 5 to 10 minutes to prep your hands makes a massive difference:

• Injury Prevention: Just like an athlete, your hands, wrists, and forearms have muscles and tendons that need to heat up. Gentle, deliberate exercises prevent strain and repetitive motion injuries (like tendonitis).

• Fluid Technique: This specific arpeggio exercise focuses on “skips,” which forces your brain and fingers to coordinate. Warming up this way gets rid of that initial finger stiffness, meaning your actual practice session will feel much smoother and more fluid.

• Mental Focus: A good routine acts as a bridge, helping you leave the distractions of the day behind and shift your brain into “guitar mode.”

Give this A Major skip routine a try at a slow, comfortable tempo before you start your next practice session.

If you are looking for more ways to kickstart your practice routines, be sure to head over and visit my guitar lessons channel at www.youtube.com/simonmorelguitar for plenty of other tips and exercises.

Cheers,

Simon