Finger Stretching Exercise

Before starting this lesson, I am going to give you a warning. Be careful with these exercises! If over done you will injure yourself. They should be practiced for very short periods of time. You should feel a stretching in your hand, but you should not feel pain. If you feel pain, stop immediately. With that said, these are 3 very helpful exercises in helping you develop your reach ability on the guitar. I call them "The Worm", "The Spider" and "The Slinky". Once you play them, you will probably get an idea of where the names come from.

The Worm

With this exercise you are starting high on the neck of the guitar and working your way down. At first you will probably not get very far. But over time you will be able to work your way down the neck. You are going to place all 4 fingers down first. You are playing chords here, just picking the notes one at a time. Each different chord shifts only one finger down a fret from the previous chord. There are 4 different chords in the cycle and then the process will start over again. You can continue this process all the way down the neck. Take it slow.

Left hand fingers
  |
  4  3  2  1   4  3  2  1   4  3  2 1   4  3  2 1    4  3  2 1
E:----------9-|----------8-|---------8-|---------8-||---------8-|
B:-------10---|-------10---|-------9---|-------9---||-------9---|
G:----11------|----11------|----11-----|----10-----||----10-----|
D:-12---------|-12---------|-12--------|-12--------||-11--------|
A:------------|------------|-----------|-----------||-----------|
E:------------|------------|-----------|-----------||-----------|