Exercises to warm up before playing the Ukulele

 Warm up is an important part of playing your ukulele, activate the muscles of your hands and fingers so you can play better, with greater fluidity and without much physical effort. Starting to play a difficult song without having warmed up will always make you much more complicated, here we have a couple of exercises to start your songs with the right foot.

Stretching:

These exercises will help you reduce the pain you may get and reduce the risk of developing carpal tunnel syndrome:

Hand stretch:

With your arm stretched in front of you, stretch your hand in a "high" position. With your other hand, take your fingers and stretch them towards you so that you feel the stretch. You should feel the stretch in your wrist and the lower part of your arm.

Hold that position for 15-20 seconds.

It is important that when you are stretching do not feel pain, the stretching should be pleasant.

Repeat with the other hand.

Reverse hand stretch: 

You can stretch your hand in the opposite direction by dropping your hand with your arm outstretched and stretching it towards you with your other hand. You should feel the stretch in the upper part of your arm.

Repeat with the other hand.

Thumb Stretch:

With the arm facing forward again and with the fist clenched and the thumb up as if saying "good" With the other hand, gently pull your thumb towards you.

Repeat with the other hand.

Exercises: 

The following exercises will not only help you warm up, but they can help you play better and change chords faster.

It is important that you do them calmly and do not rush because the important thing is not the speed with which you do them but the quality of the exercise. If you can't touch them perfect try slower.

If you want to have better tempo control you can use a metronome and that will also help you in the long run to have a better rhythm.

Almost chromatic heating:

Joe Satriani Diagonal:

The rule for this warm up is that you must use one finger per fret and not touch everything with one finger, this way you have to alternate your fingers to complete the exercise.

A |--------------------------1-2-3-4--|--1-2-3-4--------------------------|
E |------------------1-2-3-4----------|----------1-2-3-4------------------|
C |----------1-2-3-4------------------|------------------1-2-3-4----------|
G |--1-2-3-4--------------------------|--------------------------1-2-3-4--|

You can do it in two different ways:

1 Leaving your finger on the fret once you touched the string or

2 Lifting it right after touching the rope 

Joe Satriani Diagonal:

This exercise is very good to get your fingers in shape! They also help you teach your fingers how to locate what is very good for chord changes.

A |--4--1--5--2--6--3--7--4--|
E |--3--2--4--3--5--4--6--5--|
C |--2--3--3--4--4--5--5--6--|
G |--1--4--2--5--3--6--4--7--|

The hourglass combo:

When mixing the two previous exercises we have this hybrid that you can repeat as many times as you want

A |--------------1-2-3-4--------|
E |------------2---------3------|
C |----------3-------------2----|
G |--1-2-3-4-----------------1--|

Do scale:

The idea is that you practice playing the Do scale 

A |-----------0-2-3-|-3-2-0-----------|
E |-----0-1-3-------|-------3-1-0-----|
C |-0-2-------------|-------------2-0-|
G |-----------------|-----------------|

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