Bad Guitar Practice Day? 11 Ways to Turn It Around

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Bad Guitar Practice Day? 11 Ways to Turn It Around

By Douglas Niedt

Copyright Douglas Niedt. All Rights Reserved.
This article may be reprinted, but please be considerate and give credit to Douglas Niedt.

Are you having a bad practice day?
Learn how to deal with a bad day of practice.

Do Not Left Bad Days Get to You, Discourage You, or Demoralize You

As you learn to play the guitar or learn new pieces, realize that slumps or bad days will be part of your life. It is wildly unrealistic to expect yourself to feel and perform awesome every day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Even the very best professional musicians have “off” days. It’s part of being human and doesn’t reflect on your overall skill or progress.

Common Causes of a Bad Practice Day

1. Stress or anxiety about a non-guitar issue.
2. Environment: Are you too hot or too cold? Is something distracting you? Is there background noise or activity that is annoying you? Are you being distracted by your cell phone?
3. Sleep: Are you tired? One bad night of sleep may not be a problem. Consecutive days of insufficient sleep will definitely be a problem. Lack of sleep causes loss of focus, motor control, and memory loss.
4. Hydration and nutrition status: These can change significantly from one day to the next, and nutrition/hydration deficiencies can absolutely derail performance.
5. Non-guitar activities: Did you do something physically taxing the day before or earlier in the day, especially with your hands or arms? Such activities can tense various muscle groups that interfere with your guitar playing.
6. Impatience: Impatience or irritability can cause a bad practice day.
7. Physical factors: Consider if there are any physical reasons for your difficulties, such as finger, arm, wrist, or hand pain.
8. Frustration: Frustration can create a negative feedback loop. Try to approach your practice with a calm, patient mindset.

What can you do to fix a bad day? What can you do to turn a bad day into a good day?

1. Keep it simple and focus on small things that you can do well. Therefore, narrow or change your focus:
   • Practice a shorter passage.
   • Practice slower.
   • Practice each hand separately.
   • Practice with altered rhythms.
   • Practice something else, and then come back to the problem passage.
2. Analyze, don’t judge: Instead of “This terrible,” get specific. Is it:
   • Accuracy? If so, watch precisely where the fingers should land. Prepare the fingers so they are close to their destination.
   • Synchronization? If the problem is left-hand finger synchronization, practice the left hand alone. If it is left-hand right-hand synchronization, close your eyes to feel the hands move together.
   • Tension? Is there tension in your jaw, shoulders, arms, wrist, fingers, or hand?
3. Slow down: Today might require a much slower tempo, even if you played faster yesterday. That’s okay.
4. Focus on something else: If whatever you are practicing is not going well, switch to a different exercise or piece.
5. Take a break: Sometimes, the more we focus on a problem, the worse it gets. Step away from the guitar for an hour or more. Or, try again later in the day.
6. Change your routine: Practice your warmup exercises, studies, or pieces in a different order.
7. Use visualization: Take some time to practice the problem passage mentally, without the guitar. Visualize your fingers moving correctly.
8. Acceptance: Accept that today is not your best day. Instead of fighting it, use it as an opportunity to work on other aspects of musicianship. Practice ear training, listen to music, or study music theory.
9. Remember that progress isn’t linear: You will have ups and downs. These difficult days are part of the learning process and do not wipe out your overall improvement.
10. Change your practice schedule: Try practicing at a different time of day. Or you may need to vary your practice content.
11. Call it a day: If it’s truly awful, accept it and move on. Tomorrow is a new day.

Lousy practice days are inevitable. Even the best in the world have lousy practice days. Remembering this will allow you to complete your practice day to the best of your ability, trusting that the next session will likely be fine.

Do what you can by narrowing your focus. The worst thing you can do on a bad practice day is to beat your head against the wall and hope you will magically get it together.

If you’re having a particularly frustrating day, it’s okay to move on to something else and return to the problem passage later. The important thing is to keep your overall engagement with music positive and enjoyable.

The best guitarists in the world know how to manage bad practice days so that they gain something positive from them. When you encounter a terrible practice day, do not let it defeat you mentally, and practice in such a way that it pays dividends rather than hurting you in the long run.