Developing Finger Strength

by Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell

Strengthening your fingers will help you play the electric guitar with more precision, speed, and dexterity. Having stronger muscles in your hands and fingers and continuously working to build more power in your tendons will make a considerable difference in your overall playing ability. There are actually a couple of non-playing exercises you can do for strengthening your fretting hand, which I will tell you about below. When I reveal some of these exercises, you are probably going to think something similar to, "Oh, that is simple, anyone can do that; why is he giving us this exercise when it's so easy? That won't build much hand strength." But when you finally curl those digits around your well-worn fretboard and try the chordal set of exercises, you are going to realize they aren't nearly as easy as they seem, and you just might find yourself confessing: "Oh, now I see, this exercise is pretty difficult after all."

Before we begin the challenging stuff, so that we do not strain any muscles, we need to start off easy, so try this:

1. With your hand in the fifth position, place all four fingers on the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th frets of the neck.

2. While holding your third and fourth (ring and pinky) fingers down, raise the other two fingers off the fretboard, holding them for a count of two, then set them down again. Repeat this ten times.

3. Do the same with the opposite fingers. That is, while holding your first and second (index and middle) fingers down, raise the other two up off the fretboard and hold them for a two count, then set them down again. Repeat this variation ten times. You can think of this as trying to do hammer-ons and pull-offs if you want, with the fingers being set down with enough force to "hammer-on" and sound a note.

That is the easy warm-up. Now it will get more difficult. So get prepared. Basically we are going to be doing the same exercise as above, except now we will use opposite fingers.

Read the rest here:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/703427/electric_guitar_developing_finger_strength.html?cat=33