Unfortunately, because of ignorance of how to practice correctly, far too many players create for themselves “The Incredible Tightness”.

I am going to quote from my book, The Principles of Correct Practice for Guitar, to bring this point home.

“The relative state of tension or relaxation in the muscles is one of the hardest things to be aware of. I once saw a person play with so much tension in her right shoulder that it was up to her earlobe! Always trying to be helpful, I pointed this out to her when she finished. As she let her shoulder down a few inches to its normal position, she told me I was wrong, she wasn’t tense, but very relaxed!

The reason she felt this way is because we very quickly become used to whatever we experience, and consider it normal. We never question whatever tensions we experience in learning new skills on the guitar, and in fact, consider it part of the doing of it. And it often is, but it doesn’t have to continue to be that strenuous. We can learn to do movements with less effort.

However, when we first try something, it is often not possible to do it without a lot of excess tension. The mistake is, we assume that the tension is inevitable, and never realize we can get to a point where we can get the result we want without all the huffing, puffing and straining. Often, more stretch or muscle development is required, which will come with a correct approach.

Of course, as we continue to try this new skill, and assume the effort we feel must be that way, it becomes ingrained into our approach and gets worse. So we have a vicious circle, that leads to frustration and bad playing.

So extra tension in the muscles, which every advanced player knows is the number one cause of playing difficulty, becomes a blind spot for us. Usually, we are only aware of the result of the tension, which is that mistake we just made. Often it happens we are not even aware of that, because we start to filter out those unpleasant reminders of our troubles.

As you will see shortly, the correct approach to dealing with “mistakes” caused by tension, is to repeat the movement extremely slowly, with a great focus on keeping all muscles relaxed. With each repetition, the muscles learn the relaxed way of moving to produce the result you want. “

So you see, it is lack of understanding of how the body/mind functions, and lack of honest attention while practicing, that gets us into trouble.

You must start to observe your own “Tightness”, and replace it with “Lightness”, then you will see your level as a player change upward, what I call Vertical Growth. Since many players have no idea what this lightness feels like, here is a very simple way to connect with it. You must then begin to cultivate this feeling in actual playing. Believe me, it feels good! In fact, when you see a good player “making it look easy”, it’s because it is easy when you have the “Incredible Lightness”.