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The New Guitar Regimen: Feel Great, Superfit and Improve Your Playing Faster

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The New Guitar Regimen: Feel Great, Superfit and Improve Your Playing FasterTo improve your guitar playing you have to practice regularly. That’s a no-brainer. To make sure you actually do that you must have time, motivation, energy and focus.

Time is one thing (if that is not enough), but motivation, energy and focus are equally important and really need to be in place to make your guitar regimen rock solid.

For some this may look unattainable, but it can be done.

Let’s take a look at the key ingredients to make this work:

Prepare
Yes, prepare, prepare, prepare!
1 – Write down in your calendar at what days, what times and for how long you’re going to practice (30 or 60 min).
2 – Schedule another 30 min extra time before practice (I’ll explain in a minute).
3 – Inform family and friends your practice time is sacred and they can’t disturb you while you’re at it.
4 – Find or create a quiet and private practice space, where nobody will find you :)
5 – Set up your equipment, your guitar(s), sheet music, and necessary tools (pick,capo,tuners,etc.) the day before practice, so you are ready to roll.
6 – Make sure nothing comes in between you and your practice regimen. Make it so.

Table of Contents
Next, write out the table of contents for your practice workout. How are you going to spend those valuable 30 to 60 minutes of full blown practice?

Make sure it contains everything you love to play and things that drive you to get better and better. Choose, print and write down the scales, licks, exercises, chords, progressions and solos you want to work on. Get your nice blues jamtracks ready for improvisation, find some ear training exercises, and music theory to study, and above all, select the songs you love to play.
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How to Play Guitar and Improve When You Feel Too Tired

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How-to-Play-Guitar-and-Improve-When-You-Feel-Too-TiredYou are busy, you’re making late hours, you’re weekends are full, and you’re just too tired. The moment you finally can sit down to relax, it’s hard to pick up the guitar. You really love playing, but at the end of the day you’re worn out.

Feeling tired after a hard days work is a reality, no doubt about it, but somewhere in that tired feeling there is also a part of the story you are telling yourself. Often when we feel too tired to do something and we do it anyway the story and the feeling disappears.

Especially when you start doing something that will make you feel better when you do it like exercise or playing guitar.

So, along with this knowledge you also need a trigger that makes you want to pick up your guitar.

Again, it all has to do with the story you tell yourself.

The moment you come home from work and sit down, start to be aware of your thoughts and the inevitable excuses your mind is going to make up to escape practicing.

Stop those thoughts immediately! They are just lazy thoughts, banish ‘m.

It could also be that you aren’t thinking about practicing at all, because of everything else in your life that comes first, like making dinner, errands, kids, homework, temptations and distractions.
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