5 Powerful Tips To Help You Teach Guitar Students To Practice (And Feel Motivated To Practice Consistently)
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What is the single most important skill you must teach guitar students to help them become awesome musicians fast?
Is it technique?
Is it music theory?
Ear training?
Songwriting and improvising skills?
Answer: None of the above.
The most important skill you can ever teach guitar students is how to practice guitar correctly and consistently.
Fact is, your students do NOT become better guitarists during the lessons they have with you.
Their progress is determined by what they do or don’t do at home in between your lessons. Until you teach guitar students to practice guitar on their own, they'll make slow progress.
This drives many students to quit lessons and reflects very poorly on your guitar teaching.
EMAIL TO GET ACCESS
By submitting your info, you agree to send it to Tom Hess Music Corporation who will process and use it according to their privacy policy.
Before reading the rest of this article, take this 2 minute test to find out how well you can teach guitar students to practice.
Now, it's time to learn the key steps for mastering this area of guitar teaching.
Here are 5 guitar teaching tips to help you teach guitar students to practice guitar consistently & effectively:
Guitar Teaching Tip #1: Deeply Understand Your Guitar Students
Those who have mastered guitar teaching know that they don’t teach guitar/music - they teach people.
Effective guitar teaching involves taking a genuine interest in your guitar students, their mindset, their desires, their musical goals and the reasons behind those goals. All students become inspired differently and have different reasons for wanting to play guitar. Uncovering these reasons helps you tailor your lessons to guitar students in the best way possible.
This is critical when you want to teach guitar students to practice & feel motivated to do so.
And on top of taking a genuine interest in your students as people, it’s critically important that you understand your guitar students’ personality types.
Here is what I mean:
There are 2 primary personality types you will deal with as a guitar teacher:
Strong-minded guitar students...
And weak-minded guitar students.
Let’s quickly define each one:
Strong-minded guitar students are typically quite easy to teach.
For one thing, they are able to delay gratification very well.
Strong-minded students don’t mind practicing things where the result will come weeks or months down the road (as long as they believe they will get it).
For example: strong-minded guitar students can easily spend 30 minutes practicing finger-independence exercises, redoing their picking technique or training their ear.
They don’t tend to doubt their musical potential.
Plus: they tend to practice more than average.
And because of this?
Strong-minded students often become really good players.
The caveat?
Strong-minded guitar students are rare.
So, be glad when one comes along... but you cannot hope to build your guitar teaching business only on those types of students.
Truth is, most guitar students are weak-minded.
This means: they are less likely to believe in themselves, more likely to doubt their potential to become good players (and succeed with whatever task you put in front of them in a guitar lesson)...
They get bored faster (and thus need all the encouragement and training you can give them to practice more).
They are also more likely to desire instant gratification when they practice guitar.
And there are a lot more of those types of students than those who are strong-minded.
Now...
Can weak-minded guitar students become good players? Absolutely.
But they take a lot more skill to teach. And as far as I'm concerned – teaching weaker-minded guitar students is where you’ll really earn your paycheck as a guitar teacher.
Watch this video to see what goes into teaching weaker-minded vs. strong-minded guitar students:
When your guitar students see that you understand them and believe that you are sincerely interested in seeing them succeed, they will like and trust you a lot more and will be much more willing to do what you say. This is the foundation of your ability to teach guitar students to practice on their own.
This influence will be even stronger when your guitar students see a connection between their efforts to practice guitar and the results they get.
Guitar Teaching Tip #2: Teach Guitar Students To See Immediate Victories & Celebrate With Them
Teach guitar students to practice everything you show them. Guide your them through a mini practice session right in the lesson and get them to experience the right way to practice guitar in whatever way you just taught them.
15 Essential Guitar Teaching Tips Learn how to attract new students, earn a lot more money and more.
How To Improve Guitar TeachingLearn how to quickly become a
highly effective guitar instructor.
Get Results For Guitar StudentsTeach your guitar students how
to practice to get better results.
When you teach guitar students to practice like this, it achieves two important things:
- Your guitar students achieve immediate results (and become a little bit better as players) right in the lesson. This will get them excited about your lessons and will inspire them to practice guitar at home.
- Your guitar students will experience what it means to practice guitar perfectly. When your students practice in front of you, you can correct their mistakes and maximize the chances of them practicing correctly at home.
Most teachers get this dead wrong and instead try to teach guitar students to practice by showing them new things every lesson.
Others (falsely) assume that simply telling their students to practice = effective guitar teaching.
This common guitar teaching flaw guarantees that most of your students will NOT practice correctly at home and won’t make much progress between lessons.
Worst of all, their lack of progress will make them want to practice guitar less and less in the future.
To learn how to solve this problem and teach guitar students to become better players in every lesson, read this article about teach guitar students to practice.
Guitar Teaching Tip #3: Create A Positive Snowball Effect
Don't just teach guitar students how to practice... build their confidence in their musical potential.
You do this by reinforcing the cause and effect relationship between practicing and better guitar playing. As you train your guitar students to practice correctly and experience small victories in every lesson, remind them that:
- They are getting better as guitarists as a direct result of practicing guitar.
- The things you tell them to practice (and the way you train them to practice through your guitar teaching expertise) is moving them towards their goals.
This positive reinforcement will get your students to trust you more and will greatly increase their motivation to practice guitar.
Guitar Teaching Tip #4: Inspire Friendly Competition Among Your Guitar Students
Your students will be a lot more motivated to practice guitar when they see your other students become better players alongside them.
Use this positive pressure to your advantage by establishing some healthy competition among your guitar students. Showcase your best students and explain (to your other guitar students) that they will also become great by doing the same things your top students did.
The best (and easiest) way to promote this friendly competition among all your students is to NOT teach guitar lessons in 1 on 1 format only. Incorporate some group lessons into your guitar teaching model to give your students extra motivation to practice guitar and help them become better guitarists much faster.
Learn how to teach guitar students to practice in groups in order to transform your guitar teaching effectiveness (and income) by watching this video about building your guitar teaching business.
Guitar Teaching Tip #5: Show Proof Of Results
Very often, your students won’t practice guitar enough because they don’t realize how much progress they’ve made from taking lessons with you. To solve this problem (and teach guitar students to practice on their own), track their progress in every area and periodically remind them of the progress they’ve made.
This will show them proof that when they practice guitar, they make progress - making them more motivated to practice guitar consistently.
As a (major) side benefit to your guitar teaching business, showing your guitar students proof of their musical progress will motivate them to remain your students much longer.
To learn the very best way to track musical progress when you teach guitar students to practice & improve, check out the Guitar Playing Accelerator.
As you apply these five tips to effectively teach guitar students to practice, you will see your students make more progress than they ever have before, helping build YOUR reputation as the expert guitar teacher in your local area.
To teach guitar students to practice more effectively, take this assessment to find out how good you are at teaching your guitar students to practice.
Grow the best guitar teaching business in your area by learning how to teach guitar.
