Learn Guitar Faster by Hacking Sport Science Research

Learn Guitar Faster by Hacking Sport Science Research: In the last 5 days I’ve tried some of the most powerful practice techniques I know to improve my picking skills and I feel like I’ve made a huge improvement. In this video I want to show you exactly what I did and why.

I’m a fingerstyle guitarist by background so my skills with a pick is not great at all. In the last week I thought I’d try and my pick playing specifically and see if I could really make some good steps forward in a few days.

What I wanted to do was to come up with a practice routine that emphasized some of the approaches that have come out of sports science and see if they’d help accelerate my skills development.

I gave myself 4 things that I wanted to work on
1. A simple 4 note sweep picked arpeggio.
2. The classic 4 note descending 3nps pattern
3. A simple 4 note Pentatonic Lick Sweep picked
4. A fast alternate picked lick from highway star

The papers referenced...
How experts practice: a novel test of deliberate practice theory: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24001...

FLS skill acquisition: a comparison of blocked vs interleaved practice: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24969...

Motor skill acquisition and the speed-accuracy trade-off in a field based task: https://www.proquest.com/docview/2158...

0:00 Introduction
1:29 Science stuff!
8:13 Practice Plan
9:39 Tremolo
10:51 4 Note Arpeggio
12:03 Pentatonic Lick
13:19 Descending 4's
14:33 Conclusion

Thumbnail Photo by Nihal Demirci on Unsplash