Practicing as many guitar exercises as possible does NOT help you become a better guitarist faster. Guitarists who use this approach practice less efficiently, make slower progress and become frustrated due to a lack of results.
Here’s 3 reasons why having too many guitar exercises slows down your progress:
1. Too Many Guitar Exercises Cause You To Become Overwhelmed
It’s a myth that practicing tons of exercises helps you improve in all areas of your playing at a faster rate. Usually the opposite is true: you make very slow progress (and fail at getting better at any particular exercise). Why? Accumulating tons of exercises overloads you with too much information, too fast. You don’t know where to begin, become burned out and quickly lose motivation to practice.
2. You Focus Too Much On The Exercises And Not Enough On The Skills You Are Developing
Searching for as many exercises as you can find puts the focus on the exercises themselves instead of the skills you need to develop or problems you need to solve.
For example, many guitarists look for tons of exercises to help them become better at playing lead guitar. They end up practicing solos and licks as fast as they can without developing efficient technique. This leads to problems later when they are unable to play cleanly at fast speeds and must re-learn proper technique at slow speeds.
Taking guitar lessons with a good teacher helps you practice the right guitar exercises while correctly developing technique and eliminating playing mistakes. This helps you reach your musical goals faster and makes you a more consistent player.
3. It Becomes Difficult To Track Your Progress
Making fast progress in your guitar playing requires quality exercises that work as part of a strategy to help you reach your musical goals. With a strategy, you can track your progress. Searching for tons of new exercises for its own sake does not effectively create a practicing strategy. Instead of searching for a high quantity of guitar exercises, strategically select exercises that help you solve any problems that stand in the way of achieving your goals.
Read this article to learn how to find effective guitar exercises.
About The Author:
Tom Hess is a successful professional guitar player, composer and guitar teacher to thousands of guitarists worldwide. With his guitar lessons, he has helped guitarists improve their guitar skills. Visit his website for guitar instruction and see guitar playing video lessons, read guitar practice advice, and check out a free guitar soloing lesson.