What's a good guitar exercise for barring chords?

Question:Both are good answers...I've found the best "exercise" though is to lay the index finger across all the frets, position your thumb behind the neck of the quitar and pluck each string until you get a clean sound from each one...this forces you to arrange your hand to get the most power exerted on the strings and at first can be very painful, but as your wrist and fingers get used to the pressure it will soon feel as if you needn't push down hard at all...good luck hope this helped a little...

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Both are good answers...I've found the best "exercise" though is to lay the index finger across all the frets, position your thumb behind the neck of the quitar and pluck each string until you get a clean sound from each one...this forces you to arrange your hand to get the most power exerted on the strings and at first can be very painful, but as your wrist and fingers get used to the pressure it will soon feel as if you needn't push down hard at all...good luck hope this helped a little...

There is a very specific set of muscles involved in playing barre chords, and I can't think of any other activity that would use those muscles. So, the best exercise is to just do them. Grip the neck of your guitar as you would for a barre chord, and just flex and relax your hand. Don't worry about actually playing the chords during the exercise, just do the motion. You can also reproduce the motion replacing your right hand for your guitar neck. It's sort of an isotonic exercise, as your fingers don't actually move that much.

Don't know about good exercise, but a lot of the pressure your finger applies actually comes from your bicep. You should feel your bicep tensing when trying a barre chord. Don't make the mistake thinking that the pressure comes from your thumb pressing the neck as that will lead to you getting cramped hands quickly.

Also when barring, it's usually best to let the tip of the index finger go past the low E string and also to rotate your finger slightly towards the head of the guitar.

Hope that helped.