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"Guitar Exercises: Strength-Building Exercises For Increasing Finger Speed"

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These unique guitar exercises are made to build your strength on the guitar. The result: increased finger speed, picking speed, and stamina.

Guitar exercises -- Why are they so important?

Think about it, anyone who engages regularly in an activity, such as playing guitar, stays in shape for the activity automatically -- they never get rusty because they play often...

On the other hand, someone who only plays every once in a while will occasionally be out of shape and not quite at their top notch playing level.

To stay at your top notch level of skill, you need to stay in shape for playing guitar. The way to do that is to use guitar exercises regularly, before you have a chance to get rusty.

But, if you DO get rusty, it's no big deal. Just spend some extra time, about an hour or so, using guitar warm-ups and practicing these exercises.

Guitar exercises come in a few varieties. Mostly, they are there to keep your finger strength up. Finger strength equals finger speed, so it pays off when you want to learn those fast, impressive guitar solos.

Like I said, the main goal here is physical finger movements on your guitar. They aren't all that musical. Just think of it as taking your fingers to the gym for a workout.

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How to practice guitar

When you practice these guitar exercises, you need to follow a few simple guitar practice rules. Check the list below to make sure you are getting the most out of your practice sessions:

• Use general guitar practice tips
• Avoid bad guitar playing habits
• Learn how to use a metronome

Feel like you are in good shape now? Let's start the exercises...

Guitar finger exercises -- Improving your fretting hand

Old school finger workout

I call it "old school" because I'm pretty sure this exercise has been around since before the days the the Gripmaster. By the way, I think Gripmasters are great, but not necessary. If you practice guitar enough and use these exercises, there will be no need to buy one.

Nothing replaces real practice, not a trendy device, nor anything else.

In case you don't know what a Gripmaster is, it's a hand held, spring loaded finger strengthening device that you squeeze in the palm of your hand. Aside from being awkward, it has a lot in common with guitar picks: they get lost easily. Stick with real guitar-based workouts.

To perform this exercise, line up your fingers on the fifth string all in a row, like this:

Index - fret 2

Middle - fret 3

Ring - fret 4

Pinky - fret 5

They will all be on at the same time, like my awesome video...

The idea is to work out each finger individually by hammering it on and off the sixth string. Keep every other finger that is not in use in their positions on the fretboard. Work your way through every finger, spending about a minute on each one.

Pentatonic hammering exercise

Here is an effective left-hand exercise that doesn't use any picking, even though it looks like it does. ONLY press the strings using hammer-ons. That should be enough to activate the string a little and make sound.

Basically, you are playing through the pentatonic scale using only hammer ons, no picking. Like this:

Click tablature to enlarge:

Guitar picking exercises -- Improving your picking hand

Strumming exercise

This one sounds simple, and it is, but this basic strumming exercise will help you gain control over your strumming hand.

Here's the drill: start on the middle two strings, strum up and down for a long time. Then, increase your strum to the middle four strings, make sure to hit only those four strings. Then go back in to just two strings. Repeat for about 5 minutes.

Like I said, simple, but effective.

Metallica-style down strum exercise

This right-hand guitar exercise will get you primed for playing riffs like Master of Puppets, where they use all down strokes and heavy palm muting.

Again, simple and effective. Quickly play the open sixth string using only down strokes and palm muting. Do this for about a minute. Then move to the fifth string, then the fourth. Play each string for a minute each, reaching your maximum pick hand speed.

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