(Warming up) playing the bass as a beginner to gain flexibility, stamina str?

I have looked on the web about bass warming up exercises and found some *gasp* grueling ones that basically were a few patterns placed around the 5th fret and played over and over for a total of 45 minutes. Others were simply walking up and down the neck trying to get close to the 1 finger per fret rule as possible. Rinse/repeat for 30-45 min. Some show exercises that I don't have the ability to perform; ie my pinky isn't stretching far enough.

Kudos to those who can mindlessly do these finger excercises every day. I cannot. So here I am asking you guys what are good warming up exercises that will help me build flexibility. And for how long do you do these exercises on a daily basis? Also importantly; how to keep it fun?

I do have a nice gadget to build up my hand strength, it's the Handmaster plus which I use before and after playing bass. I also do the stretches explained by Kris in his video series for beginners. So are there exercises specifically aimed at beginners that I can use?

adjusted the topic to make it less confusing hopefully.

I don't think you need to warm up that long if you're a beginner. Those exercises seem to be only for long shows and stuff (like 3-4 hours of playing and whatnot)

Ah, it's not just to warm up, but also to help get your fingers more flexible, build up stamina and strength. Sorry, maybe I worded it wrong...

First off, the only time I do warm ups is when I'm playing live.

As for excersizes, I like to try to learn bass lines with a lod of melody in them. That's one of the reasons I like Iron Maiden, there's a lot of melody and fret play on the bass.
Also, another good one would be to try learning keyboard parts. I like those in Nightwish a lot. These will really force you to move your fingers around. Start slow and try to achieve the speed of the keyboard player, it's harder to play those parts on the bass.
Playing dropped tunings in standard is also good for stretching your hand, but you would need a 5 string for that.

Finally, don't use a lot of open strings. In fact, avoid them entirely unless they are needed for effect.

With the finger exercises I really mean those exercises like:

going up and down the snares with your index, middle, ring and pinky at the 5th-9th fret and then use finger settings 1,3 - 2,4 for a x amount of time. Then switch them and do that a x amount of time. Switch to another finger combo using 1,4 - 2,3, then switch those etc. Are these exercises even used?

maybe I shouldn't have mentioned warm up, but rather ask for finger exercises instead. My bad.

FranR wrote:With the finger exercises I really mean those exercises like:

going up and down the snares with your index, middle, ring and pinky at the 5th-9th fret and then use finger settings 1,3 - 2,4 for a x amount of time. Then switch them and do that a x amount of time. Switch to another finger combo using 1,4 - 2,3, then switch those etc. Are these exercises even used?

maybe I shouldn't have mentioned warm up, but rather ask for finger exercises instead. My bad.

For future reference: "Snaren" zijn "Strings", niet "Snares". Those are what we call "Trommels".

ThreeLetterSyndrom wrote:

FranR wrote:With the finger exercises I really mean those exercises like:

going up and down the snares with your index, middle, ring and pinky at the 5th-9th fret and then use finger settings 1,3 - 2,4 for a x amount of time. Then switch them and do that a x amount of time. Switch to another finger combo using 1,4 - 2,3, then switch those etc. Are these exercises even used?

maybe I shouldn't have mentioned warm up, but rather ask for finger exercises instead. My bad.

For future reference: "Snaren" zijn "Strings", niet "Snares". Those are what we call "Trommels".

Yeah I know. I'm slightly dyslexic so I always mix up snaar and strings which then come out as snares.