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<span style="font-size:1.4em">{{loud|ALWAYS WARM UP!!!!}}</span>
I am not a doctor. See [[MAB_Wiki:General_disclaimer|Disclaimers]]. Any medical advice below should be reinforced by your own research and advice from a professional.
Warming up helps improve your playing and avoid injury. '''Be sure to warm-up both your fretting and picking hands.''' Your fretting hand needs to be stretched so that some uncomfortable chord shapes or finger-stretches don't push you into injury or cramping. This includes your wrist, which needs to angle in difficult positions as well as your fingers. Your fretting hand wrist and elbow need to be loosened up as well. All the muscles and ligaments involved in playing guitar (there are a ''lot'' in your hands) need to be given a gradual introduction to the workload you are about to put on them, to make sure they have good blood flow and nothing is out of place. When you start playing a gig or even recording, trying to hit that difficult lick can be a jarring shock to the biomechanics involved if they weren't warmed up.
The main thing to remember for warm-ups is to go slow. Ease your hands into the workload required for playing guitar. Your warm-up exercises should hit all the muscle groups you use during playing. You want to introduce all of them to a very mild difficulty, not a severe strain out the gate. If anything produces a sharp pain, back off and try to ease through it slowly. If it doesn't get better and in fact gets worse, you may already have an injury you need to get treated. Trying to push through the pain can often result in a catastrophic injury that prevents you from ever playing guitar again...or even worse.
Failure to warm-up can cause early onset of [[Injury|Carpal Tunnel or tendonitistendinitis]].
== Cardio ==
== Stretching ==
'''Stretching is crucial to reducing the <u>Repetitive Stress Disorder</u> (RST) and <u>Carpal Tunnel Syndrome</u> (CTS).''' It improves flexibility of muscles and tendons, reducing their pressure on nerves and blood vessels. It improves blood flow, serving to remove toxins and metabolic byproducts from muscles. It also produces fluid that serves to lubricate joints.
'''While stretching is a good part of a warm up, it will have a more powerful impact ''after'' a playing session.''' The small, repetitive movements required by intense guitar playing will aggravate and tighten the muscles and tendons of the hands and wrist, putting pressure on the nerves in the wrist, causing Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. ''I recommend a light stretching before a session, perhaps even integrated into your cardio routine, and thorough stretching afterwards, particularly focused on the forearm and finger muscles.''
All stretches should be done carefully - forcing a stretch too quickly or overextending the muscle can itself result in injury. Any pain associated with stretching should be mild and spread throughout the muscle, not sharp and confined to a joint or nerve. Slowly increase tension until the muscle feels slight (but not sharp or intolerable) pain and hold for 20-30 seconds, then release.
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=== Fingers ===