Exercises You Need To Know To Ease Your Sore Fingers From Playing The Ukulele

Sore fingers. They are the absolute nightmares for beginners who have just started playing the ukulele. If you are a victim of sore fingers, do not be disheartened, don't give up on your ukulele journey. Having sore fingers when you first started practising the ukulele does not mean that you are too weak for the instrument nor does it indicates your incompetence. In facts, it means that you are en route to becoming a better ukulele player.

To alleviate the soreness of your fingers, there are several finger exercises you can do daily or before your ukulele practice session to strengthen and stretch the muscles in your fingers.

Basic stretches

1. Wrist stretch

credits: https://blog.paleohacks.com/stretches-to-release-wrist-pain/#

Hold your right arm straight, 90 degrees perpendicular to your body, with your fingers pointing upwards. Gently use your left hand to push your right hand until you feel the stretch in your wrist and arm. Hold the position for a few seconds. Do this exercise for each individual arm 5 times.

2. Reverse wrist stretch

credits: https://www.healthline.com/health/osteoarthritis/arthritis-hand-exercises#wrist-stretch

Hold your right arm straight, 90 degrees perpendicular to your body, with your fingers pointing downwards. Gently use your left hand to push your right hand until you feel the stretch in your wrist and arm. Hold the position for a few seconds. Do this exercise for each individual arm 5 times.

3. Fingers stretch

Standing feet should-width apart, interlock your fingers and stretch it towards the ceiling. Be sure to stretch upwards until you feel the stretch in your fingers.

4. Using a stress ball

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Hold the stress ball in your hand. Squeeze the ball and flick out your fingers. Repeat this process for as long as you can. Switch to the other hand afterwards. This exercise will help you to strengthen your fingers immensely.

Ukulele exercises

Fretting exercise

Let one finger play one fret.

Starting from the G string, play the first fret with your index finger once, followed by the second fret with your middle finger once. This will then be followed with your ring finger on the third fret and your pinky on the fourth fret.

After you are done with the G string, you can continue on the C string, followed by the E string and the A string. Following that, you can now repeat the whole exercise in the reverse order.

This whole exercise should be done more than once. Ideally, you should do this at least 5 times before your ukulele practice session if you are a beginner. If you have spare time, try to do this exercise daily. It will help you to gain better control over your fingers.

Things that you need to take note of:

1. Each sound produced must be clean.

2. Find a comfortable fretting position that does not strain your wrist as you play the notes.

On a side note, this is a basic exercise. Of course, you can come up with different variations of this exercise to suit you better.

Variation of the fretting exercise

Instead of playing at every fret, you can skip the second and fourth frets. Play the first fret with your fore finger and the third fret with your middle finger, starting from the G string. You can then do it in the reverse order and with the other strings!

We hope that the above-mentioned exercises will be helpful in helping you with your sore fingers or sore hands! If there are any other blog posts you would wish to read about, leave a comment below!