Warm-Up and Playing Time

When to read this: after Session 1, “The Hand Warm-Up”, “The Spider Crawl”, “The Pain Rule”, “The 30-Minute Rule” (10 minutes); after Session 13, “Two Sittings” (5 minutes). None of this reading is part of a session’s 50 minutes.

What You’ll Learn

This handout covers four things:

• The movement warm-up: what it is, and when you do it.
• The spider crawl: what it is, and where it stands in a warm-up.
• The pain rule in full, with the 30-minute rule: no stretch of playing longer than 30 minutes without a 5-minute break.
• The two sittings: how you play a practice day’s plan that is longer than 30 minutes.

Session 1 sends you to the warm-up, the pain rule and the 30-minute rule: the sections “The Hand Warm-Up”, “The Spider Crawl”, “The Pain Rule” and “The 30-Minute Rule”. Session 13 sends you to the section “Two Sittings”.

The Hand Warm-Up

Open and close both hands loosely five times. Circle each wrist five times each way. Touch your thumb to each fingertip in turn. Shake the hands out.

This warm-up is movement only: you hold no stretch, before playing or after it.

Do it before you tune, at the start of every session and of every practice day. On a practice day it is the first thing in the “Warm-Up” row of the week’s plan. At the start of a second sitting you do it again, and it is not counted in the minutes.

The Spider Crawl

The spider crawl is a finger drill: fingers 1, 2, 3 and 4 play four frets in a row on one string, one finger at a time, then the next string. Each finger lifts after its note.

Spider crawl: frets 5-8, one finger at a time, all six strings, up and down. If it pulls, stop the crawl; if it aches, stop playing for today.

In a warm-up the spider crawl comes after the warm-up playing, never first. It stays at frets 5 to 8 for the whole course, and it takes one minute. It has no tempo and no metronome: it climbs no tempo ladder.

The Pain Rule

The pain rule

1. Normal: fingertips that are tender, red or dented by the strings. Keep to the time limits and take the breaks.
2. Stop for today: fingertips that sting or burn, a blister or broken skin, or a hand that cramps or aches. With a blister, do not press strings again until it has healed.
3. Warning signs, stop at once: pain in the wrist, forearm, thumb joint or knuckles; numbness or tingling; any sharp pain; pain that lasts into the next day. Rest until it has gone completely. If it comes back when you play, or has not gone after two days, see a doctor or physiotherapist before you play again.

Never play through any of these to finish a session or to keep to the schedule.

The time limits the rule refers to are these: no stretch of playing longer than 30 minutes without a 5-minute break, and the daily limits printed beside barre work, slur work, little-finger work and three-string power-chord work. A break means the guitar is out of your hands.

The 30-Minute Rule

The 30-minute rule is this: no stretch of playing longer than 30 minutes without a 5-minute break.

Break: Put the guitar down for 5 minutes at the end of Segment 3. No stretch of playing is then longer than 30 minutes.

In a session: the line above stands at the head of every session, under its Duration line. The break is the 5 minutes at the end of Segment 3, with the guitar out of your hands.

On a practice day in Phases 1 and 2: the week’s plan is 30 minutes or less, 25 minutes in a lighter week. So it is one sitting and needs no break. A plan is never made longer to catch up. An item that the “Any no” line or the entry check tells you to add to your warm-up makes a day longer than its plan. If a stretch of playing then comes to more than 30 minutes, put the guitar down for 5 minutes when the 30 minutes are up.

The session day is not a practice day: do not add the week’s plan to it.

One check you can make alone: when you pick up the guitar, set a kitchen timer or your phone’s timer to 30 minutes. When it rings, put the guitar down for 5 minutes.

Two Sittings

From Session 13 a practice day’s plan is 35 minutes, and from Session 25 it is 40. That is longer than 30 minutes, so you play it in two sittings, neither longer than 30 minutes. A lighter week stays at 30 minutes in one sitting.

Where the two sittings divide is printed under the week’s plan, in the line that begins “Two sittings this week:”. That line names the first and the last row of each sitting (or its one row, where a sitting is one row), and each sitting’s minutes. The rows keep the plan’s order, and the division is the most even one the rows give. The line is not printed in this handout: it stands in the sessions only.

Leave at least an hour between the two sittings.

Begin Sitting 2 with the movements under “The Hand Warm-Up” in this handout, then tune again. Neither is counted in the minutes.

If only one sitting is possible on a day, play Sitting 1 and leave Sitting 2 out. On the next such day, play the “Warm-Up” row and go straight on to Sitting 2, and leave the other rows of Sitting 1 out. Never join the two into one stretch longer than 30 minutes. On your last practice day of the week, play both sittings if you can: the Self-Check Questions are answered in the rows that hold them. A question whose row you left out that day is not a no: answer it on one more practice day, before the next session.