If you practice often and for more than an hour at a time, you will be able to build up decent finger strength on your own. But if you're looking to quickly build finger strength and stamina, there are an endless number of exercises you can do to speed up the process. Most finger exercises are mentally challenging as well, which adds a second degree of practice. The following examples are exercises that sound horrifying but produce great results if used actively. The purpose of these exercises is you help your mental and finger skills. Scales Practicing scales is the best way to gain finger strength. Simply start playing the major scale up and down at a relaxing speed. Make sure that when you’re playing notes, they are ringing through clean and there is no fret buzz. When you fret the string make sure you are pushing the string down between the frets and not directly on top of them. When you move up a string don’t lift your finger off of the fret board more than you have to. After you are comfortable play a scale. Start playing it faster and faster. Do not play any faster than you feel comfortable. Play all the scales you know, major, minor, blues, whatever you know will work. Staircase Exercise This is a popular John Petrucci exercise. It involves playing a staircase like pattern and inverting it and playing it again. To start on the first fret use your index finger to start and fret frets 1, 2, 3, and 4 and each finger sound be on a different string. Index finger on the E string 1st fret, Ring finger on the 2nd fret A string and so on. Pluck each string and once you get to the G invert the shape so that the index finger is on the 1st fret and the G string and pluck the strings from G down to E. After plucking the E string on the 4th fret invert the shape again and move the shape up a fret and repeat. This exercise is difficult at first but if you can get to a point where you can play this quickly and fluently you will find it a lot easier to play certain chords and even some solo lines. Chromatic Exercises The chromatic scale or exercise is a great way to improve your speed and accuracy. Play four notes in a row on a string and then move up to the next string and down a set of frets and go up four more notes, after that move up a string and down a fret and play up four more half steps. This will bring you to the last note of the exercise, if you want, you may continue it up through the rest of the strings if you can. Just make sure you’re playing smoothly and clean. Start out slow like all exercises and work up the speed as best as you can.
Without the correct preparation the fingers are likely become rigid and sore when playing the guitar. The fingers have to be flexible and capable of bending into unusual shapes in order to play certain notes and chords. The stiffer they become, we continue to force them to play, getting tenser as we go along which in turn affects our fingers. So is there anything we can do about this problem?
The answer to this question is yes. We need to ensure our fingers are properly prepared before we begin. An ideal way to do this is to perform finger exercises which will add strength to our fingers even whilst we are not actually playing the guitar. Normally quite difficult chords will be so much easier to play simply by using a soft rubber ball to carry out squeezing exercises to stop our fingers becoming stiff.
As well as strength, fingers need to be supple too and exercises such as typing or playing games using the keys of your computer keyboard will keep them moving. It is important to give the third finger more exercise as traditionally it is the weakest of them all. You will see proof of this fact when you place your hand palm downwards on a level surface and try to lift the third finger without moving any of the others. This weakness can be overcome by practicing using your third finger for tasks where you would normally use your index finger.
When you are watching TV make a point of wiggling your fingers by way of exercise. Let your fingers do the walking up and down the chair arm, put your hands into tight fists and then release each finger stretching it as you go. Take a few minutes to stretch your arms above your head and then allow them to drop by your side. With loose fingers shake your hands and feel the tightness fade away.
Just before you start playing your guitar, give your hands a good shake to get rid of any tension, then warm up by doing some scales. Start slowly at first, then speed up as you continue playing. If your hands or fingers are cold you should get them to the right temperature before you begin. You can do this by soaking them in a dish of warm water.
If blisters are a common occurrence after you have been playing your guitar, you should let them heal before plucking or strumming the strings again. There are plenty of other things you can be getting on with while you are waiting for your blisters to disappear such as brushing up on the theory of music. This means you will not waste your "out of action" time. Of course, you can avoid blisters by playing your guitar a little at a time to start with. Your fingers will harden eventually and you should have no problems in the future. You can always tap your fingertips on a hard surface whenever you get the opportunity as this will also help them to become firm along with exercising your fingers at the same time.
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