2: Beginner Guitar Foundation Skills

Set yourself up to avoid bad habits that will stunt your growth

Almost everything we do in life is through habit.

A habit is developed by doing things repetitively until we can do them automatically without thinking about them... brushing your teeth, riding a bike, driving a car.

Habits are usually taken for granted and not generally analyzed to find out how they can be improved.

But some skills - like playing guitar, playing golf, or brain surgery - benefit greatly when you take extra care to develop the best habits.

Beginner Guitar Bad Habits vs Good Habits

We're not all 'wired' to be natural guitar players.

So it's important that you start with the proper foundation to build habits that make learning and playing easier. The 'habits' you develop will be with you for a long time... so you better make sure they are good habits.

The habits you develop while learning guitar can be either good or bad.

There are several important things you need to do right if you want to set yourself up for ongoing

Muscle-Memory = Play Effortlessly on Auto-Pilot

The biggest culprit that prevents you developing an good technique is TENSION! Most people play with far too much tension and use the grip of death. They push and grip too hard when playing chords and lead.

You really need to develop a light, relaxed touch in order to develop your technique to its full potential.

Here's a video I made that explains this in more detail.

How Your Nervous System Helps You Play Guitar

Your nervous system is like a computer program. You actually program new nerve endings in your brain when you learn new physical skills.

Now, the important thing to realize about this is... that if you program your brain and nervous system with bad playing habits, you'll play with those bad habits and mistakes 'automatically' without realizing it.

In other words, when you program your subconsious brain with garbage, you get garbage out the other end.

So take it real slow, easy, accurate, as relaxed as you can with as light a touch on the fretboard as you can. This is the way to program YOUR subconscious brain to play perfectly and effortlessly on auto-pilot.

STEP 3:  Follow a simple beginner guitar lessons plan