Warming Up

The first thing any guitarist should do before playing anything remotely challenging is to warm up. Warming up will loosen your fingers, stretching the muscles in preparation for more intense playing later. This is essential for the same reason you would warm up before working out at the gym. If you don't warm up properly you are increasing the chances of injuring yourself, not to mention your fingers won't be playing at their optimum level.

So go through these warm up exercises every time you start playing guitar. Learn the exercises slowly on your own first, then play along with the audio. If you find the speed of the audio too slow and you are not properly benefiting from these warm up exercises, play them on your own at a speed you find progressively more challenging for 10 minutes until you are warmed up and ready to go.