The 3 Tips to Practicing Every Pro Knows

Part 1: How to make the most of your time to get real results

Part 2: What and how to practice to create momentum

Part 3: The secret to progressing quickly

So you have made it to Part 2. Congrats, you are starting that momentum. We need to stay focused on keeping it moving forward. If we do this right, you will find yourself wanting to practice all the time. Which is where we want to be mentally. We can't practice all the time, life gets in the way however being excited about practicing is a great place to be.

Part 2 : What and How to Practice to Create Momentum

So in part 2 we are going to take a close look at focus and consistency!

So hopefully you grabbed a lesson from part 1 and have been working on it for the last week. If not, no worries, you can grab one today and get started.

But for the sake of part 2 I am going to assume you have been working on the lesson you chose at least once (hopefully more).

If you only got to it once that does give us a chance to explore why it was hard to get back to it. But we will save that for further down the page.

So let us first look at daily practice and how difficult it is for most. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. It is life. Sure daily practice provides the best results. I 'm not about to tell you it doesn't. However we can still see some very good results even when we cannot do daily BUT the trick is to stay consistent with the material.

Very Important - when you pick up your guitar, you need to work on what you did last time you picked it up. Even if that means fighting that urge to start something else or fighting that feeling of "ugh, I have to start again". You are not starting again. It might feel like it but the brain keeps track of way more then we have a tendency to give it credit for. So even if your fingers are fumbling around and you can't remember it, fight through. Use the same breakdown you did before.

The more we break something down the more likely it gets stored in our memory even if dusty. For example, trying to remember an entire song can be tough, but remembering just the chorus or just the intro riff or even just the 1st two chords.

The Riff

1:25 - 1:54

Here is this little riff I started working on and thought it might be fun to use as an example of staying consistent with what you practice.

So I will play this riff and in a broken down manner like described below, every time I pick up my guitar for the next couple weeks.

The Breakdown

1:58 - 2:18

Beat 1 - They are sixteenth notes so I will play 4 in one beat. Note that there are only 3 different notes we will play here as we come back to the 2nd note.

2:19 - 2:36

Beat 1 with down beat of Beat 2 - For this next part I am just adding the down beat of beat 2 which happens to be the A that started the riff. I am going to focus on this a bit before continuing.

2:36 - 3:36

Beat 2 - Now we will start on that A we just ended on above (the first note of beat one and the first note of beat 2).

Beat 2 is a descending line. Also sixteenth notes which makes for 4 notes again making up the beat. We will continue to alternate pick it.

3:36 - 4:04

Beat 3 - This starts on the 7th fret of your 3rd string to give us a D. Starts chromatically and ends with an open G.

Beat 4

4:22 - 4:44

Here are the last 3 notes to put this whole one measure riff together.

Note that this is the same pitch G we saw above however this time instead of playing it as open G we will use the 5th fret of your D string (4th string).

Consistency
Direction - might focus on this in part 3 (members site)
Each Page Should Expand on Last
Most Important: FUN!

Keep In Mind

Simple and Easy to Understand and Use
Short and Clear
Each Page Should Expand on Last
Most Important: FUN!

Focus and Direction

Focus and direction - this will be achieved by mapping some things out. But for now I want you just to focus on the finger gymnastics pattern you chose to work on above. By keeping just this one topic on our radar for the next couple practice sessions you will see where we are heading.

This should be the 7 daily practice topics for focus and direction.

Things to Remember

Know You Can Play Anything
Have Patience With Yourself
Work to Find Enjoyment from What You Can Play Now

Speed

I will show you how to use the calendar method to track and plot your speed much like a runner or weight trainer. It works! I promise.

Part 2 : Secrets to Getting Results

So if I use the headline:

Learn the 3 Practice Tip Every Pro Knows

What are these 3 tips?

Daily is best. duh. we all know that. helpful? not really.
Having daily material you come back to time and time again (Consistency)
Never forgetting to practice the basics
Breaking everything down into smaller pieces (Breakdowns)
Practicing where you still have control

Consistency

Now I know you are probably thinking daily practice and of course daily practice is great but from decades of teaching I know this is not easy for most people.

So we want to focus on consistent material. In other words if you start working on an AC/DC song today or a specific arpeggio shape, it is very important every time you pick up your guitar you play these things. Does't necessarily mean a lot of time needs to be spent but just that you be sure to spend a few minutes on them every time you pick it up.

The Lesson:

Let us use a cool strum pattern and song with just a couple chords to get started!