[jraph]

My piano teacher uses the Hanon for warmup, and it does seem to help train the fingers. We have never looked at the instructions, I didn't know it recommended this. It seems painful. Instead, she gives rhythms to follow, there's also one exercise consisting in accentuating times.

I guess it can (should) be used like this: keep the scores, disregard the instructions, add your own exercises on top of the scores.

I do find it a bit boring, but it seems it makes sense to warm up before playing and to strengthen the fingers / hands (although I have no evidence of this whatsoever). I guess warming up also helps moving your focus from whatever you were doing to the piano.

What other ways do pianists use for this?

[mtalantikite]

Practice your scales in parallel and contrary motion through the circle of fifths. Then pick a few four part chords and play through their 10 forms and inversions.

If you’re looking for exercises, check out Dohnanyi’s book: https://arhtisticlicense.com/2017/01/21/how-to-practice-pian...

[oriolid]

Playing scales and arpeggios is one common warmup. For practicing technique, there lots and lots of etudes by Czerny, Burgmüller and others that have copyright expired.