How To Get Your Guitar Students To Make Fast Progress By Showing Them How To Practice Effectively
Teaching guitar students to practice effectively on their own is critical for helping them make tons of progress in between lessons.
Your students achieve great things in their guitar playing when you:
- Help them understand the benefits of working on the thing you tell them to practice while you’re teaching guitar.
- Allow them to become motivated and inspired by imagining how amazing it will feel when they practice correctly and reach their musical goals
- Actually train them to practice guitar the right way ‘during’ their guitar lesson.
And guess what?
When your guitar students feel motivated to practice and get better faster...
... they associate the good feeling of ‘progress’ with you (and your guitar teaching).
This makes them more likely to stay longer with you...
... trust your recommendations to join your other guitar programs.
And refer more of their guitar playing friends to become your guitar students.
So, motivating your guitar students to practice leads to a whole host of benefits to your guitar teaching business and your guitar teaching income.
Plus, getting your students to practice is literally part of your job description as a guitar teacher. So, there is that too :)
How DO you motivate your students?
This starts by explaining to them the benefits (to their playing) of practicing something the right way - no matter how boring it may feel for them on the surface.
And, on the flipside, you may also lay out the consequences of ‘not’ practicing the right way. (e.g. the time and money they waste on guitar lessons that don’t make them better. Or the frustration from not reaching their goals.)
That said...
Simply talking to students about the benefits of practicing is not enough.
The other part of your job as a guitar teacher is to walk them through the process of practicing right in their guitar lesson with you.
That ensures your guitar students really understand what they ought to be doing when they practice at home. Plus, it gives you the opportunity to correct their practice mistakes before they leave their guitar lesson.
The result?
Your guitar students will improve quickly even if they don’t have a lot of time to practice guitar at home. (Most of my own guitar students, for example, reached their goals practicing less than 1 hour per day.)
This video shows you how to train your guitar students to practice correctly (so they do it right and feel motivated):
Your guitar students don't get great results from practice when you make the mistake of not properly training them in the way shown in the video.
Question: “Tom Hess, what if my guitar students object to me training them to practice because they want to ‘learn more stuff’ from me in their lesson time?”
Answer: Remind your guitar students that they are paying for you to help them get a result. And you training them to practice is a huge part of helping them do just that.
That said, not training your students to practice is just one common mistake guitar teachers often make.
Read this article about teaching guitar effectively to learn 14 other guitar teaching mistakes to avoid in order to get the best results possible for your students.
Learn how to make more money teaching guitar, while working less hours.
