Stretching for Guitarists

July 11, 2009 | Stretching No comments yet

Guitarists need stretching no less than gymnasts. Without proper stretching how do you expect to reach for those weird chord voicings? Good stretching will benefit your overall playing, so it is important to work on it regularly.

So lets begin. This exercise is taken from the book by Guthrie Govan, called Creative Guitar 1: Cutting Edge Techniques. Here it is:

Difficult part is that you have to keep all four fingers on the strings all the time. How else can you get stretching! We start with a Emaj7 chord and move the fingers one by way until we reach Ebmaj7 chord (same chord shape but one fret lower), then do same maneuver, one more time, one more… continue until you reach the nut (do not be frustrated if you cannot do that right away).

Start with any position that is comfortable, but preferably as high up the neck as possible and move to the nut.  You might get stuck somewhere along the way. if that will be the case try going back 2-3 frets and work your way up from there. Remember that reaching the nut is a long term goal. It might take several weeks to get there.

You must be very careful playing this exercise! Never start on it unless you had a good warm up. Chromatic exercises are a great way to get your hand in shape, doing some legato runs will be a great way to warm up too. Good luck!