How To Create An Effective Guitar Practice Routine

Do you practice guitar for too much hours but can’t see real results in your guitar playing? Do you know why you are struggling to get better at guitar regardless all the time you are practicing?

I also suffered this same dilemma, but after some years of trying various strategies on my own, I discovered four key foundations for ensuring great results from any time I practice guitar and started to make progress. These are the four key foundations of a perfect guitar practice routine:

Key #1: Train With The Best Quality Guitar Practice Materials... That Are PROVEN To Bring Big Results

Having the best practice schedule is a critical step for making progress, but it won’t make you a better guitar player if you use poor materials (like “lessons” from amateur guitar teachers / YouTube videos). Without the best practice materials, you simply can’t get any better at guitar.

To distinguish poor guitar practicing materials from great ones (the ones that apply to you and your specific guitar playing goals) you need to know this:

1. The finest materials aren’t created in isolation. They need to be coordinated into a strategy built especially for you and your musical goals (this is one reason why the vast majority of YouTube content is excluded).

2. The best materials are given to you by an experienced guitar teacher. You identify an expert guitar teacher not by looking at his / her playing skills, but at the skill level his / her guitar students have developed. The better students a guitar teacher has, the better the chances are that he / she will give you high quality practice materials.

Key #2: Efficient Guitar Practice Scheduling

Most guitarists fall into two categories when it comes to using a guitar practice schedule:

1. Guitar players who keep looking for a single practice schedule that will make them great players.

2. Guitar players who consider guitar practice routines to be boring and pointless.

No one in these two categories knows how a guitar practice routine actually works... and because of this, their guitar playing will never improve like they want it to.

The perfect guitar practice schedule is based on your own guitar playing goals and practicing preferences. This makes it both effective and enjoyable. To understand how to combine these elements, check out this article about the best way to practice guitar.

Notice: No matter how many results a practice schedule is giving you today - it will eventually stop working. Why? Because as soon as your skills evolve you will need to change your practice schedule, so that it adapts to your new skill level.

Test your ability to create highly effective guitar practice schedules for yourself with this guitar practice assessment.

Key #3: Being Consistent In Your Guitar Practicing (It’s Not What You Think)

Being consistent not only means “practicing guitar every day”, it means consistently implementing all the key elements of a highly effective guitar practice routine. Becoming a great guitar player is the result of consistent practice over the long term.

The secret for practicing guitar consistently is always keeping in mind the REASONS why you practice guitar and why you want to become a great guitar player. Continuously remind yourself how great it will be when you finally become the guitarist you want to be. This will drive you to do whatever you need to do to make it happen, and help you stick to your practice routine.

All of these items build upon each other and create what I call the “guitar playing progress loop”. Improve each item of the loop and you’ll achieve fast results in your guitar playing.

Key #4: Practicing Guitar With Total Concentration

If realize you are practicing guitar mindlessly, it doesn’t really matter how much time you spend on it because this kind of practice will get you nowhere. If you aren’t fully focused, you aren’t really practicing. If you get easily distracted... you aren’t practicing, you are merely playing. This won’t help you accelerate your guitar playing progress.

Think of your mind as a magnifying glass - With the right amount of focus and concentration, a small point of sunlight can be used to create fire. This is the power of a focused mind... use this same focus when practicing guitar.

Watch this video to see an illustration of what it means to practice guitar with great focus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z_im3oZzuk

To test how much you know about practicing guitar correctly, take this assessment about creating guitar practice routines.