LoL! Yesterday was one of those days for me. I got so tired of listening to myself, I didn’t even make it through warming up and decided to take a day off.
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I don’t really time my warm up but doing a few exercises like the spiderwalk and playing a couple of catchy basslines for fun usually has me good. Is that maybe like 10 minutes? I’m not sure, maybe a bit more.
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I always start with a minute or two of hand/wrist stretches, and then play consistently bad for about an hour
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Sometimes I think its the time it takes to turn my work/family/stress brain off and fully immerse in the music vs. getting my fingers moving that makes for warmup time. Once focused it all seems to work fine. Some days this is 15 min, some days its “F-it I can’t focus today, see you tomorrow”.
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I know that feeling… brain completely cluttered with everyday BS and just messing up things 
I wouldn’t really call it warming up, it’s more like opening yourself to the groove 
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This is something I really struggle to do 
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I’s taken me 47 years 
Realistically though, like you it takes me a 20-30 minute run up to get going. When I’m doing a B2B lesson, I’ll do like a 10 or 15 minute noodle/exercise session with a backing track before I get into learning.
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About 10 minutes of hand exercises, permutations and finger shifting exercises. I think it’s important to always warm up first.
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It depends on what I’m doing… if I’m practicing in general, I like to do my warm up licks for about ten minutes first.
On the other hand, if I’m in the midst of learning a song, I just jump right into where I left off the night before. It’s amazing how things I was struggling with just fall into place after a night’s sleep.
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I am lucky if I can find 30 uninterrupted minutes to practice at a time!
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I think I am going to start a 5 min meditation thingy before playing to clear the mind. Wonder if it would help.
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I don’t really have to warm up. My playing starts good and gets worse over time. Sometimes it takes a bit to find the right groove.
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I often think meditating at work would be great, unitl I realize it would only work if I did it for the entire workday.
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I never really put a clock on it but 10-15 min feels about right. That being said, if I could get a guitar player any guitar player to realize that their warming up does not need to be done at a soul crushing volume I could rest easy. Not that I haven’t been guilty of it in the past but that was then, this is now.
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Yeah 10-30 minutes seems to be the sweet spot. I’d have a couple of playlists that I would use to warm up. 4-6 songs then I’m good to go on with what I want to do.
That said there are days that I could not get in the pocket. When that happens 2-3 songs in the row, I call it a day. Opposite is also true sometimes a quick practice will turn in to a few hours if I’m in the groove and the creative elixir is flowing, lol
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I often take a few days off between playing so that makes my required warm-up time vary a lot. If it’s been more than a couple days since playing my basses it will take me a good 15 minutes or so to warm up.
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For me, if its a practice, It gets more intense every time I play it, before moving on to the next song. Maybe the first song or so.
At gigs, usually halfway thru the first set. By then, it’s supposed to all be muscle memory, right?
When the girls I play with turn to look back at me, and I’m gyrating all over my spot like I gotta pee, they smile, knowing I’m warmed up!
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About five minutes of warmup does it for me.
It’s either go-time, or not. If not, no longer amount of “warming up” time helps a bit.
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