One of the most frustrating aspects of trying to master the guitar are the various points where progress seems to stop. This can happen in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons.
The most common cause of limitations on progress is poor practice habits.
Many guitarists have never been exposed to the concept of practice theory and/or the idea that practice is a skill in itself. This can lead to guitarists spending years spinning their wheels by simply “practicing” what they feel like almost at random, without focused attention on any particular thing and without practicing correctly.
Let’s look at three specific problems that lead to limited or blocked progress on the guitar and what can be done about it.
1. Sloppy Practice
For technique or speed, this can mean running through something over and over again at maximum speed hoping to get faster and achieve a cleaner sound. Nothing will be more frustrating since you’re literally cementing the opposite of what you’re trying to achieve into your mind and muscles.
As you’ve heard me say in the past, however you practice something is how you will learn it. If you practice something sloppy, it will always be sloppy. If you practice something with perfect articulation, your end result will always have perfect articulation.
Of course, the way to always practice with perfect articulation is to practice very slowly with the metronome, only gradually increasing your speed over time. It’s not as exciting at first and it takes some discipline, but that’s how those techniques are achieved. There are no shortcuts in that regard.
2. Lack of focused practice
This idea of practicing things almost at random is actually a serious flaw in any guitarist’s practice routine.
Every guitarist enjoys picking up their guitar and simply playing whatever they feel like playing. However, the problem happens when these random playing sessions become confused with actual practice. While you will absolutely benefit from every time you play the guitar, a focused and measured effort is required to achieve the higher levels of technique and general mastery of the instrument.
If you find yourself getting frustrated with practicing something and needing to take a break from it before mastering it, all that means is that you are practicing something that is a little too advanced for where you are. Sometimes you can get away with jumping forward a bit, but this should never be a common approach. Without a solid foundation for your technique, you will never be able to achieve the level of playing you are working towards.
It is critical to know exactly what you are going to practice, and why, before every true practice session.
You must segment a dedicated amount of time in your practice routine to each individual thing you are working on. For true optimization, this can mean breaking something down into its elements and spending time on each element separately.
For an example of this, a guitar solo could be practiced as a whole for memorization while the techniques used in that solo could be practiced separately with the metronome before attempting the whole thing at full speed.
There are a large variety of ways this can be done and it’s an area where creativity can really come in handy.
This ties in and brings us to our last point…
3. Poor goal setting and failure to reach goals
Specific goals are absolutely critical to any effective practice routine. Goals are what tell you where you are going and give you the stepping stones to get there. If you’re not setting realistic short-term goals that work you towards realistic long-term goals, you are just spinning your wheels.
Obviously, every guitarist has what we could call an “arch-goal” that defines what they are hoping to achieve in the long run. This could be something like one day playing as well as a favorite guitarist or even becoming a rock star. And while this arch-goal is key for maintaining motivation to practice at the core, it’s not what we’re talking about now.
In every practice routine, there must be a hierarchy of short and long-term goals. Breaking them up further is even more effective. Let’s look at a specific example.
A long-term goal can be something like becoming a master of alternate picking at Shred speeds. Now, this goal can potentially take a year or more to achieve. If that’s the only goal you bring with you to your practice sessions, you will feel that you are failing to achieve it every day. You won’t be able to track your progress and this will lead to lack of motivation and eventually burnout.
On the other hand, you can set specific reachable short-term daily goals that will guarantee satisfaction and momentum in every practice session.
In the case of our example, your daily goal could be about reaching a specific BPM on your metronome with your alternate picking. Again, this has to be something realistic or else you will run into the same problem. If you set this goal and reach it every day, you will build momentum and actually see far clearer and faster progress than you would otherwise.
As a side-note, you could consider mastering specific patterns to be something like mid-term goals that could be spanned out over days, a week or more. This is also incredibly effective.
The more you apply these principles, the more you will understand the relationship between practice, your mind and your level of skill. This will cause you to actually become more skillful in practice itself and you will begin to optimize your practice time more and more. This happens naturally and will cause your progress to increase almost exponentially over time.
If you’re looking for something new to practice, check out my brand new course: The Infinite Shred Method.
Dan Mumm