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What are you doing in the warm-up routine ?

Lots of scales, JB Cramer studies and BACH!! Chopin's waterfall etude is one of the best warm ups but i find you have to warm up before you can play it so it sort of defeats the object!!

1) Scales, 2) Chords, 3) Arpeggios, 4) Hanon 5) Trill Exercises.

Very basic but very effective!!

survivordan.. how long does that take you? tho a big fan of preparatory exercises, i've been lax..

How many octaves in scales and arpeggios and which chords ? With inversions or not ?

This may sound silly, but I use the game Guitar Hero for hand warm ups. The game works great for waking and stretching of the fingers. I can play the game both left-handed and right-handed so it works out well. It sort or prepares your mind for coordination with the keys and notes as well as focus. Although I would not recommend everyone to rush out and buy the game for this purpose, but if you already have it, it is a fun way to warm-up! After that I generally will begin with one or two past songs I have learned, then I'll start with my current work.

BACH

Morning:
1) 15-minutes of Cortot's Daily Keyboard Gymnastics
2) 15-minutes of Cortot's Rational Principles of Pianoforte Technique (a different series most days, depending on difficulty)
3) 15-minutes of scales/arps/octaves, a different M/m pair each day
after that, I practice repertory 2-3 hours

Afternoon:
1) 15-minutes of Czerny School of Velocity (a different exercise most days, depending of difficulty)
After that I practice 2-3 hours

If there's an evening session,
1) 15-minutes Bach Inventions

P.S. I don't work - I'm retired

Haha you are wrong about that, you DO work!

Scales, various exercises from Hanon, Dohnanyi, Brahms, and things teachers showed me.

As far as how long it takes - my answer is "until I'm warmed up." If you're warm in 5 minutes, there's no reason to keep on going. If it takes a half hour, then I spend a half hour.

I usually just jump in and start practicing whatever pieces I'm working on. If I feel I need to warm up - I play Bach's Invention #8 a couple of times. Works for me.

Rachmaninoff 39/1, Chopin 10/1 10/4 10/12 25/6, not always all though

First I do finger stretches, then practice a major and minor scale (different one every week) For the scales, I put the metronome on something fairly slow (60ish) then I'll play one note per beet, then two, then three, and so on until I get to 7 or 8. Then I do the arpeggios for the scale. After that I work on some exercises from Dozen a Day. Then I sight read a few pages of something and one or two hymns. If I have a lot of time, I'll run through some pieces I worked on recently.

Your warm up routine should achieve your purpose. Scales, arpeggios, chords, different technical exercises, etc, all warm up different parts of your fingers/wrist/hand muscles. If you find that when playing repertoire pieces some parts of your hand are still not completely warmed up, then add that to your warm up routine. The converse is also true, as in there is no need to play all 24 scales if you find playing half of them is already sufficient, as some techniques overlap.

2 octave scales in a different key each week. Broken arpeggios in inversions on the tonic of the key up and down the keyboard i.e. 135, 351, 513, 315. HS and HT. Then I do the block chords the same way up and down the keyboard.
On alternate days instead of the arps and chords, I run the I, IV, V, progression in all inversions using common tone voicing.

This routine warms up the hands and mind and is always first in my morning session. It takes me about 20 minutes but it's hard to tell because I frequently have to stop to help get the 12 and 16 year to school. Stupid kids.

Kurt

School? SMART kids!

I think warm-up and improving skills are not the same. In my opinion, warm-up might include:
- walking, running, other whole-body exercise
- light stretching
- meditation, if you do that
- playing music that is already very easy for you

And the other items, things that build up piano skills, belong in another category that is only done after warming up.

play the stuff due, am warm at the end of practicetime, and have spaghetti in stead of fingers, every day, it works.

My warm-up routine: a nice, hot cup of coffee, black with sugar...and a warm croissant. That gets me ready for slow practice on whatever piece I'm working on.

I usually start out by just doing some sight reading for about 15 minutes. That usually gets me warmed up in an entertaining way. Sometimes if my hands feel unusually cold or stiff I will start out with some slowish scales, gradually working up faster and faster.

By the way, is it just me, or do any of you notice that you can be well warmed up, then practice a slow movement and be cold again when you're done? Maybe it's just that I get cold easily...