I've mentioned before that it takes me at least an hour of solid playing to properly warm up. This is inconvenient when I only have an hour or two to practice on a given day. I must spend an unreasonable portion of my allotted time either warming up or playing under my potential.

It's usually my timing and inter-hand synchronization that requires this daily fine-tuning. I'm starting to think that my picking hand is the bottleneck. My fretting hand feels nimble enough after just a few minutes of playing and stretching, but my picking feels clunky for much longer.

I discovered a solution the other day at work. I frequently have leftover picks in my pockets, which I always empty into my desk drawer in the morning. I grabbed a pick, held it with my (relatively) new grip, and ran it back and forth on my desk surface. The motion and angle were as if playing lap steel with a pick. Not quite ideal, but it got my muscles working. Any time I wasn't typing or mousing, I went back to my little pick scrapes. When there was music around, I'd play in time.

When I finally went home to practice that evening, I felt like my warmup was already done the moment I picked up my guitar. This will come in handy.

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