One of the worst guitar speed myths is that using strength exercises for your fingers makes you faster. Reality: Developing excellent guitar technique is the foundation for fast and clean guitar speed.

You run into many problems by focusing on strengthening your fretting hand fingers rather than simply practicing guitar to develop better technique. This spells disaster for your guitar playing in several ways that leads to tons of unneeded frustration.

Here are the main reasons why using strength exercises for guitar speed is a mistake, the problems this causes and what to do instead to truly get faster:

Reason #1: It Makes Playing Fast Harder By Training You To Use More Grip Strength Than Needed To Fret Notes

Training yourself to improve grip strength or finger strength reinforces the idea that these things are important for speed. Since they have nothing to with playing guitar with faster speed, you are left using more energy to fret notes than is really needed.

You really only need just enough pressure to get the note to sound. No more, no less. Using extra pressure is an inefficient use of energy that adds up quickly and makes playing guitar with speed feel much more difficult than it should.

“Question: But what about when I have a hard time playing on guitars that use heavy gauge strings?”

Answer: It is generally going to be difficult for a short period of time to play a guitar (whether electric or acoustic) that has heavier string gauges than you’re use to. This problem naturally fixes itself in time the more you play on this instrument.

If you have more than one guitar, use different string gauges on each one to make it easier to adapt and play any guitar with speed and accuracy without problems. If you have a bass guitar, playing on this is another great way to make yourself more adaptable to heavier strings.

Note: Don’t make the common mistake of using light strings simply because they are easier to bend/get notes to sound while fretting. Experiment with different string gauges with “tone” as your goal.

Reason #2: Gripping The Frets With More Strength Causes Tension In Your Body And May Lead To Injury

Focusing on “strength” rather technique can have bad long-term consequences. This can lead to playing guitar with a lot of extra tension in your fingers and other parts of your body. This sometimes causes injury and is extremely frustrating.

Use this process to play guitar with speed in the most relaxed way possible by removing tension from your body:

1.   Fret any note on guitar.

2.   Tremolo pick the string of that note continuously. Slowly release pressure from the string you are fretting until you are no longer able to hear the note clearly (it starts to become muffled).

3.   Now add just enough pressure to get the note to sound clearly. THIS is the exact amount of pressure to use anytime you play a note.

4.   Next, choose any guitar lick and go through this process with every note a few notes at a time. Do this until you are able to play the entire lick using without wasting any energy.

While going through this exercise, pay close attention to any tension you feel in different parts of your body, like your neck, arms or back. Whenever you feel tension arise, stop and relax. Then begin playing again

Get more information for how to prevent guitar-related injury by reading this guitar practice article.

Reason #3: It Takes Away From Time You Could Actually Be Playing Guitar

Bottom line: Playing guitar with speed and technical skill requires playing guitar. Doing other activities that are unrelated to this doesn’t help you.

Instead of wasting time with finger strength gadgets or other tools, create an effective guitar practice schedule focused on achieving specific musical goals.

This video explains how to get better at guitar faster even when you don’t have much time by practicing efficiently: