How To Practice Guitar For Rapid Guitar Speed Improvement
10% faster in one day
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Most guitar players try to build guitar speed the same way:
Start slowly … gradually increase the metronome tempo … practice until you hit a wall … then repeat the next day.
When that stopped working, you looked for better speed exercises. When those didn’t help either, you started practicing longer.
And when that failed, you started wondering if you just don’t have the talent.
If that describes your guitar practice, I have good news: those 👆 methods are built on myths that are actively holding you back.
Not because the methods are useless - but because the beliefs behind them are incomplete and often flat-out wrong.
10% faster in one day
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.
I've trained thousands of guitar players to play guitar fast and clean.
The ones who struggle the longest almost always believe the same things about guitar speed.
Once those beliefs are replaced with what actually works, their speed starts moving again - often shockingly fast (with a great guitar teacher).
One Guitar Player's Story Shows Why
What happened to one of my guitar students shows exactly why these myths cost you years of progress - and what changes everything.
Today, Ludvig from Sweden is a composer in symphonic metal and shred guitar styles who rips through instrumental Paul Gilbert tunes and Yngwie solos for fun - playing them just like the record.
But when he first came to me, things looked very different.
He was in his mid-20s, fresh out of college with a degree in project management, practicing an impressive 2 hours a day with strong discipline and solid technique.
But his guitar speed was stuck at around 150 bpm 16th notes.
As he told me: "It felt like the faster I became, the slower the progress got."
What Ludvig didn't realize was that several deeply held beliefs about how to practice guitar for speed were keeping him stuck - even though he was doing almost everything else right.
I'll show you exactly which beliefs those were, what replaced them, and how his guitar speed broke through to a comfortable 200 bpm 16th notes within 18 months.
But first - here are the myths that might be holding YOUR guitar speed back right now.
Myth #1: "If I'm Not Getting Faster Quickly, Something Is Wrong"
This myth creates the most frustration. It's easy to think that if you practice guitar daily, you are supposed to see guitar speed improvements daily too. And if you're not seeing them - you may assume something is broken.
Maybe your technique is flawed. Maybe you just don't have the talent to play guitar fast.
None of that is true.
Building real guitar speed is not a video game.
You don't get instant gratification from every guitar practice session. There will be days - sometimes weeks - where your playing doesn't feel any faster despite consistent work.
Every champion guitar player went through this. The difference is how they thought about it.
They didn't say "something is wrong."
They said: "I know effort is involved. I know I'm going to need to go through these steps. But if I do, it's going to pay off (big!). How could it not?"
That's what happens when you practice guitar with the right approach and give it time to compound.
Accept this and commit to the process.
Watch this video where I mentor one of my other guitar students through a similar frustration:
Note: this mindset only helps when you're reasonably sure you're practicing correctly and the only thing missing is patience.
Which raises the question: how do you know if you’re practicing correctly? Most guitar players aren't. Because they fall into the next myth, which is:
Myth #2: "Speed Is Built By Practicing Speed Exercises"
Ask most guitar players how they practice guitar for speed.
The answer is almost always: find a speed exercise, play it with a metronome, and grind it until it gets faster.
But speed exercises don't build guitar speed. At least - not the way most players think.
Guitar speed is not ONE skill – and it doesn’t come from “the exercise” alone.
It's the result of many elements working together: picking hand efficiency, fretting hand efficiency, finger independence, picking articulation, two-hand synchronization, tension control, string noise control, and mental processing at high speeds.
Any piece of music - any lick, riff, or scale run - can be a "speed exercise" if you use it to target one of those specific elements.
And no exercise builds speed if you're just playing it faster and faster without addressing the element that's actually holding you back.
This is also where the metronome gets misunderstood.
The metronome doesn't build guitar speed. The metronome TESTS guitar speed.
You build speed by identifying which element is weak and making sure your repetitions at a given tempo are installing the correction into your muscle memory.
Bumping the metronome up to a higher bpm doesn't make your guitar technique better - it just gives you a higher bar to test yourself against.
Most players have this backwards.
They keep pushing the bpm thinking it will force them to play guitar fast.
But they'd improve more by spending time at the fastest tempo where their guitar playing is actually clean - and stress-testing their technique at that speed before moving up.
Here is an example of what this looks like:
This is one big reason why general YouTube tutorials only work up to a point. They can only give abstract, one-size-fits-all advice about how to practice guitar. That advice becomes progressively less useful the more you apply it - because YOUR specific bottleneck is different from the next player's.
But even when you ARE targeting the right element, there’s another myth that causes most players to quit right when they’re about to break through.
Myth #3: "Guitar Speed Progress Should Be A Straight Line Up"
You practice guitar consistently, so your guitar speed should improve consistently. Right?
Not even close.
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Sometimes when you discover a problem in your guitar technique, you will temporarily play worse while fixing it.
That's not a sign of failure - it's a sign of progress.
Your old technique - the one with the bad habit - could be done on autopilot.
The new adjustment you're learning requires your full concentration. That forces you to play slower than you could before.
And it gets messier.
There comes a point where you know both sets of motions - old and new - EQUALLY well. Your brain gets confused. Your guitar playing becomes inconsistent, full of mistakes you weren't making before.
(👆 This is where most players give up. )
They think the change made things worse. So they go back to their old habits, and the plateau continues.
The players who push through - who commit to making the new motion stronger than the old one - are the ones whose guitar speed suddenly jumps forward.
It feels like it happened out of nowhere. But it was all thanks to the work they put in during the messy phase that most players refuse to sit through.
Watch this video to see me help a guitar student undo one of his bad guitar technique habits holding back his speed:
And here’s where most players unknowingly make the messy phase even longer than it needs to be. It's all thanks to the next myth, which is:
Myth #4: "More Guitar Practice Time In One Sitting = Faster Results"
When you're trying to fix a bad habit or reprogram your guitar technique, the instinct is to sit down and grind it out for as long as it takes.
Here is why this backfires:
Your brain learns most efficiently when it's fresh. After too many repetitions of the same thing, it stops learning.
The reps aren't building anything anymore - they're just fatiguing your hands and your focus.
And as fatigue sets in, your guitar technique gets sloppier, which means you're now practicing the wrong motions - undoing your own work.
Short, focused bursts of guitar practice - where your concentration is sharp and every repetition is precise - do more for your guitar speed than marathon sessions where the last 45 minutes are just going through the motions.
So what do you do with the rest of your practice time?
You practice guitar in OTHER areas - creativity, integration, music theory, composing, learning new material.
The skills that make you a complete player, not just a fast one.
Ludvig learned this the hard way. Like many disciplined guitar players, he was spending up to 90 minutes a day reprogramming his technique.
I had to coach him to cut those sessions short, be patient, and spend that time on his other goal: becoming a composer.
Once he did, his guitar speed improved faster AND he made progress on the skills that would eventually let him write the symphonic metal and shred guitar music he plays today.
Which Of These Myths Are Running Your Guitar Practice?
Be honest - because these beliefs are sneaky. They sound like common sense. They sound like disciplined, responsible guitar practice advice.
(That 👆 is exactly why they're so hard to spot on your own.)
Now - reaching your long-term guitar speed goals takes discipline and patience.
But here's something most guitar players don't realize: there is almost always at least 10% more speed hiding inside your current technique and skills that you're not able to display yet.
You don't need months of work to unlock it. You need 1 day … plus the right process.
I show you exactly what that process is in my free guide "Speed Blitz: How To Play Guitar 10% Faster In One Day." It walks you through 7 simple steps - and by this time tomorrow, your guitar playing should already be noticeably faster.
What I Saw When I Watched Ludvig Practice Guitar
When I watched Ludvig in one of the live video support sessions (which he had access to as my guitar student), I spotted the problem immediately.
He had nuanced picking hand issues that - despite his guitar playing being above average overall - no general YouTube tutorial had ever diagnosed.
He couldn't even begin to fix these habits because he didn't know they existed.
On top of that, he was only practicing with the metronome in two ways: starting slow and gradually speeding up, and speed bursts.
Both are valid - but they were the only tools in his toolbox. There were many other ways to use the metronome when practicing for speed that he was not aware of.
That's the thing about guitar speed plateaus. Ludvig was disciplined, intelligent, and practicing 2 hours a day. He was doing more things right than most players I work with.
But the specific bottlenecks holding his guitar speed back were invisible to him - and invisible to any generic advice online.
Once I pinpointed those habits and showed him how to address them - while being mindful of the myths that hold back 90% of guitar players - his speed plateau began to crumble.
What No Article Can Tell You
I know what you might be thinking: "This sounds like a pitch for guitar lessons."
And honestly - it kind of is. But not in the way you expect.
This article showed you what's probably wrong with the way you practice guitar for speed.
That's the easy part. The hard part is figuring out which of these myths is costing YOU the most progress - and what YOUR specific guitar technique habits look like under expert scrutiny.
That's exactly what I do with my students in my Breakthrough Guitar Lessons.
I diagnose the specific habits holding your guitar speed back, and show you exactly how to fix them, while giving you a ton of feedback and support along the way.
And I create personalized guitar lessons specifically for you to help you reach ALL your musical goals (that turn you into a real musician - not just someone who can play guitar fast).
Ludvig was smart enough to get that kind of feedback - and his guitar speed jumped 50 bpm in 18 months after years of plateau. You might need something entirely different than what Ludvig needed. To get started with your personalized guitar playing breakthroughs click the button on the banner below:
Your Guitar Speed A Year From Now
Eighteen months from now, you could be where Ludvig is - playing music you currently think is impossible for you. Or you could still be grinding through the same guitar practice routine, hoping for a different result.
The first step doesn't cost you anything.
Download your free copy of "Speed Blitz: How To Play Guitar 10% Faster In One Day" and prove to yourself that faster playing is possible - starting today.
