How to Improve Finger-Strength for Guitar

This has to be one of the most common problems that comes up when I speak with beginner guitar players, and students – how can they increase their finger strength to play well, and to play longer?

First off, it’s truly unbelievable how many people choose to ignore the importance of warming-up before playing. Warming up is essential because of so many reasons. It gets blood flowing to your hands, for starters. It allows you to loosen up and play the guitar in a better way, and it also helps you avoid stress and health-related problems in the long run. But perhaps most importantly (and relevant to the matter at hand), warm-up helps parts of your body used during guitar-play stronger.

Playing the guitar, especially for long lengths of time, requires your fingers to be strong, flexible, quick in their movement, and dexterous in order to have better coordination.

Before playing start off with a warm-up of all the muscles, tendons and joints, most notably those in your fingers. Develop a proper warm-up regime for the purpose, and stretch out your arms, fingers, legs and your back. Use this simple guide for the purpose.

One simple exercise is simply closing and opening your hands a few times. Clench your fingers into tight fists and open, repeat a few times. Following this, open your hand and stretch out your fingers for at least a few seconds. In a similar pattern rotate your wrists quickly in a clockwise-anticlockwise motion.

This should be followed by stretching your fingers. Just like any muscle before exercising, your finger and hand muscles will need to be stretched out if you want them to perform properly. Not only will this make your hands more flexible and gain strength over a period of time, it will also help you avoid any stress-related issues or pain in the longer run.

In order to stretch your finger, place the tip of your fingers on the edge of a table (or a flat surface), and arch your hand upwards while keeping your fingertips firmly in place on the table. Repeat at least a few times. Alternatively, interlock the fingers of both your hands, make sure that the Dorsal side of your hand (your wrist and the knuckles) are facing your head. Move your fingers away from your face in an outward position, while keeping the fingers interlocked. After doing this a couple of times, close your fingers in order to create a fist and repeat the process as necessary.

Stretching is important because at times, you’ll really need to stretch your fingers in order to hit some of those chords during guitar-play. Simple stuff like crossing your fingers, making a ‘Vulcan’ sign and making a finger stack (by putting your fingers on top of one another) are some great, simple exercises.

An exercise intended to help you with hand strength involves holding and squeezing a tennis or a rubber ball. Take a tennis/rubber ball, hold it on your hand and squeeze repeatedly. Alternatively, squeeze and hold and count till 10 before releasing. Alternative between both exercises and repeat each exercise 10 times.

In addition, you’ll also need to work on increasing your finger span, as some chords will require a wider span, from your thumb to the pinkie. Stretch out your hand by forcing your fingers as far apart as you can, and do this for both your hands. Furthermore, using one hand, hold the thumb of your other hand and pull it out until you feel it stretch, keep holding it for a couple of second before you release it. Then do the same with the pinkie by stretching and holding it out to the side and keeping it held till the count of ten. You can do this with all your fingers, one at a time, for both your hands.

Once you start playing, play a trill using your index and little fingers, Fret with your ring finger and trill with your fourth finger, using rapid hammer-ons and pull-offs. Use a metronome and start slowly and ensure that you stay in time. Build up on your speed when you feel like the current speed is getting easy; that is a clear sign that your finger strength is building. Make this little exercise a part of your guitar playing, as it will increase the strength of your fingers.

Another rather simple exercise to increase finger and muscle strength and flexibility is using a rubber band to stretch your fingers. Place your fingers inside a rubber band and spread them apart to stretch it as much as possible. Close fingers to release, rinse and repeat at least 10 times or so.

There are some fantastic guitar exercises and warm-up exercises available out there (especially on the internet), that should help you immensely with improving your finger strength, make your fingers much more flexible and increase and enhance your strength and playability. Guitar courses such as GuitarTricks actually start lessons off with warm-up exercises, and include exercises aimed at improving finger strength and dexterity.

Remember, it is important for your fingers to be flexible and nimble in order to be able to hit tricky or difficult chords, as well as move quickly up and down the fretboard. Above all, dexterous, quick, loose fingers will allow you to play what you want to and truly become the sort of guitar player you desire to be, without causing any hindrance to your guitar playing. And perhaps even more importantly, warming up and loosening your muscles is a healthy practice that will prevent and health-related issues, RSI or other strain-related injuries in the long run.