Practice buzzing your lips without the instrument. This is a very good way to warm up. An effective method is to play simple songs on your mouthpiece such as 'Mary Had a Little Lamb'. You don't always need the instrument to practice with, you can buzz your lips as if you are playing your instrument.
Buzz into the mouthpiece. Before you assemble your instrument, practice buzzing rhythms into your mouthpiece. Practice doing different pitches into your mouthpiece, that will help with using your lips.
Make sure your instrument is functioning well. Try playing the note C and see if it sounds right. You may have to release the water keys. Be aware of any problems your instrument has.
Play the scale you are most confident with. Play it in different ways. You can play it staccato (separated), slurred, loud, quiet, play every note twice (e.g CCDDEE etc.), play major and minor (a major scale is converted into minor by making the third and sixth note flat). When you have practised that scale a couple of times in different ways, try another scale. The concert B flat scale is a good scale to start with. What notes it consists of varies from instrument to instrument depending on the key. As a rule of the thumb if you play a B flat instrument (like the trumpet) it'll be a C scale and if it is a C instrument (like the trombone) it will be a B flat scale.
Play arpeggios. Arpeggios are the first, third, fifth and last note of a scale. The arpeggio of C would be C,E,G,C'. Again, try playing it major and minor and in different ways.
Practise lip exercises. Lip exercises are important to build lip muscles. Practice lip slurs. Lip slurs are slurs where you do not change the fingering or position just your lip shape. Try slurring up and down. If that appears too easy try slurring lots of notes. The tighter your lips the higher the note, the more loose your lips the lower the note.
Try buzzing as long a note as you can manage. Remember to take a deep breath before trying. See how point you can hold a note and try and beat that record. This exercise will help you with your breathing.
Practice tonguing. Warm up your tongue muscles by playing exercises which have lots of notes and rhythms in them (disqualifying slurs). Accented notes are also good for warming up your tongue as they require you to tongue harder.
Practice fingering/positioning. You don't even need to blow into the instrument to try this. Just move the valves or slide to a study/piece. Try one which requires a lot of different notes and move your valves or slide as it should be. Don't move them around Hocus-Pocus as you won't learn anything from it, do it to some written down music.
Play through some simple tunes like 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' or 'Jingle Bells'. This will mean that you are ready to play harder tunes.
Practice different pitches. Try playing a mixture of low and high notes so you are prepared to do both.
Play studies from music books. Try various types and don't stick to the same ones. Try ones for, lips, tounge and fingers as you need to know all of that.
Get help with an instructor. If you haven't already, get an instructor to help you and give feedback on how you play and what you need to work on.
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