Waking up feeling stiff in the fingers is extremely common for guitar players, especially if you were playing a lot of guitar the day before. Luckily, there's a fantastic exercise that can loosen up the hand, relax the fingers, exercise your picking, loosen your wrist and re-balance your arm in as little as 2 - 3 minutes each day...




In this lesson, I’m going to show you my favorite finger exercise to do every morning to help loosen up the hand wrist and arm along with increase the flexibility for the rest of the day. 

Like I said, this exercise is my personal favorite and it was first shown to me it was called the "Sawfly," by my first guitar teacher.

Much of what you are trying to overcome in the first period of playing for your day is the tightness that develops from both the hand posture combined with how we work our fingers. 

The "Sawfly" exercise is going to help hit these key areas and allow you to do it quickly so as not to take up much time in your day.

WATCH THE VIDEO:



I want to show you a guitar technique exercise that you can do every morning, (or at the start of every segment that begins your practice day).

When you get into this, you’ll find that it will help you gain a lot more improvement to develop not only your picking, but also to develop your left and right hand coordination, and most importantly - to develop your accuracy.

This exercise was taught to me by one of my first guitar teachers, (Dave Condy) and it is without a doubt one of my favorite guitar exercise of all time, in fact it’s been a huge benefit on the path to developing my own level of guitar technique and my picking and playing accuracy.




WARM-UP WITH THE SAWFLY:
If you adopt this warm-up exercise, I’m quite sure that you’ll also find that it will also give you a lot of benefits toward your own guitar playing so let’s get started with learning this exercise.

The nick-name that my old guitar teacher had for this exercise was, (as he called it), the “Saw-Fly.” Now, at the time when I first learned this exercise, I had no clue what a Saw-Fly was, or why this exercise was even called by that particular name.

But, as it turns out this type of bug, goes in a jagged zig-zag pattern when it is flying or when it lands on the ground.

That zig-zag pattern is one of the really unique things surrounding this guitar exercise as it gets played on the neck.

The exercise should be at first learned in one easy to access position on the guitar neck. Explore the set-up of this exercise on the fingerboard to get things started.


The layout:
Take notice of how the general layout operates between two strings with a saw-tooth pattern on the fingerboard...

When performing the pattern, you'll want to apply a zig-zag approach to how the notes will move string to string...



Once you can become clear on exactly how the layout of the Saw-Fly exercise sits on the neck, (and how you’re going to begin using this exercise as a routine), then the next stage of work is going to be moving it around.




Saw-Fly Exercise Application:
Next, let’s learn how the practice of this exercise would be established as a routine done on a daily basis.

If you put in the work toward practicing this exercise, I’d suggest doing it in the earliest part of your day. And, practice it with a more diligent application of all of the finger movements.

This exercise will go a long way to help promote several stages of improvement for building better levels of skill for both the left as well as, for right hand technique.

Study the "on the neck" examples shown below...

Example 1).
1st and 2nd string layout.



Example 2).
3rd and 2nd string layout.




Example 3).
4th and 3rd string layout.




Continue working across the fingerboard with the exercise (within this position) covering the 5th and 4th, as well as, the 6th and 5th strings. 

Then, start to move position by position along the neck laterally as well. The exercise only truly requires about 2 - 3 min. of work, done at the start of each practice session. Judge your progress after 90 days.




CONCLUSION:
If you’re a guitarist who is possibly recovering from a hand injury; (such as tendonitis for example), then this exercise will offer you a great deal of help. 

For injuries, the exercise offers improvement and for the re-development of your hand and fingers so that you can start to slowly gain back the use of your playing technique once again – and do it all - pain free.

So, put this exercise to work for yourself. It will help you in many different types of ways to allow for building up your skills and giving guitar players a lot more accuracy for playing anything more clearly and more perfectly.