stretching excercises

[amethyst]

Someone has probably asked that before,but does anyone has any links to sites that contain excercises to do before playing the piano to warm up your hands and protect them from injuries?

[ardor]

as dumb as it sounds i find running my hands under warm water quite helpful

[debussy symbolism]

Greetings.

Aside from warming up the hands in water, which is a great idea, you should run through scales and do arpeggios. Before I proceed to other excercises, I do scales, short, broken, long arpeggios and then go on to practicing the 11 chords. Then I practice the diminished 7 th chordal patterns chromatically. Hope this helps.

[Motrax]

I find that literal stretching excercises are great for warming up. I usually begin a practice session with Chopin's Op. 10 No. 1 (for the right hand) and Op. 10 No. 9 (for the left hand). These etudes are not hard to memorize, and playing them at the fastest tempo you are capable of (this can mean very, very slow if your hands are cold, which is fine) will warm you up in a matter of minutes.

There's another nice excercise I do on occasion which helps with both stretching and warming up. With the right hand, play middle C with finger one, C# with 2, C with 1, D with 2, and so on until you reach the longest (non-painful) stretch you can manage. Then do that again with fingers 1 and 3, 1 and 4, 1 and 5, 2 and 3 (this one's tough at first - I couldn't reach a tritone when I started), 2 and 4, and so on. Then repeat it in a mirrored fasion with your left hand (starting with 1 on E and 2 on Eb, and playing in a downward sequence).