Five Hidden Practice Mistakes That Hold Guitarists Back

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Stuck practicing the same riffs and wondering why your playing won’t budge? We dig into the real reasons progress stalls and share a step-by-step way to turn scattered effort into steady gains. This isn’t about buying another pedal or memorizing another scale shape. It’s about practicing with intention, tightening your groove, and building a system that exposes weaknesses, connects skills, and keeps you accountable with honest feedback.

We start by reframing practice. Instead of vague goals like “work on scales,” we zero in on specific, measurable tasks: connect pentatonic positions one and two on the top strings, at a set tempo, for a short, focused block. Then we shift to rhythm and feel. Most players overtrain the fretting hand and undertrain the picking or strumming hand, so we break down subdivision choices, dynamic accents, and pocket control over backing tracks. From there, we get candid about weak spots and how to find them—whether they’re technical, theoretical, or visual—using short drills, tuner-checked bends, metronome grids, and targeted transitions.

We also unpack why learning songs often fails and how to fix it with a three-part model: know the roadmap by ear, own the tools under your fingers, and lock the groove before stitching sections together. Finally, we make the case for regular assessments and constructive feedback to eliminate blind spots, along with a healthier approach to comparison that fuels growth without crushing confidence. By the end, you’ll have a clear framework to focus your sessions, play tighter, and turn practice time into real musical results.

If this resonates, subscribe, share with a guitar friend who needs a nudge, and leave a review with the one habit you’ll change this week.

Links:

Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/

• Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus...
• GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0...
• Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... .

Episode Transcript

Steve (00:00):
Have you ever felt like no matter how much you practice,
it feels like you're just kindof spinning your wheels and
you're not really gettinganywhere?
The thing is, most guitarplayers aren't stuck because of
what they're doing.
They're stuck because ofinvisible habits that keep
holding them back.
What I'd like to do is breakdown five of the biggest ones
that I think would really helpyou in moving yourself forward.
The first thing I want to talkto you about is what I call

(00:28):
intention.
Practicing with intention.
Okay.
When you go to practice, youmight be thinking, okay, what I
really need to work on is uhmovement between the positions
or or the strings, for instance.
And you start doing that, andall of a sudden you find
yourself like fundamentallypracticing each position, or,

(00:48):
you know, I really want to workon my string bending.
That's what I need to focus on.
My intention needs to beworking on my bending.
And maybe my vibrato orsomething like that.
And as you do that, all of asudden you find yourself
noodling.
The most important thing iswhen you tell yourself, what is
it that I want to work on today,right now, whatever it is, what

(01:10):
is my intention?
What does my focus need to be?
Not just, I need to practice myscales or I need to practice my
technique.
What do you need to practice?
What do you need to practiceabout your scales?
You might have 10 differentthings about your scales that
you need to practice, and that'sokay.
But practicing with intentiontells you today or right now,
what I need to focus on is this.

(01:30):
This is what I need to work on.
Okay.
Not just macro, I need to getbetter at my scales or something
like that.
Again, there's nothing wrongwith that.
That's fine if it's working foryou, but if it's not, you need
to zoom in and say, what is itthat I really need to focus on?
I need to focus on connectingmy strings.
I want to focus today.
My focus is going to beconnecting position one of the

(01:50):
pentatonic to position two ofthe pentatonic.
And how am I going to do that?
Well, maybe what I'm going todo is I'm going to focus on
moving between the twopositions.
Maybe what I'm going to do isI'm just going to focus on
moving between these positionson the first and second strings
only.
You know, there's lots ofdifferent ways that you can

(02:17):
learn to practice withintention, but it's it's getting
out of this generalization.
Number two is the importance ofrhythm and groove.
Okay, so often we get, youknow, into this thing where
we're learning theory and scalesand modes and arpeggios and all

(02:38):
these things, and that's great.
Again, nothing wrong with it.
Resources or tools that you'relearning.
I never think there's anythingwrong with them.
The thing you have to askyourself is when's the best time
to be working on these things?
And so often what people focuson is what the fretting hand is
doing, and they don't thinkenough about what the uh picking
or strumming hand is doing.
So it's important to learn toreally separate your strumming,

(03:02):
for instance.
If that's what you're trying towork on, is your strumming.
Work on, you know, techniqueslike scratching or whatever it
might be independently and focuson the tightness and the
accuracy of your rhythm.
Focus on the dynamics of yourrhythm.
The same thing is going tohappen when you're dealing with
single note picking.
Like if you're playing over abacking track, don't just focus
on, you know, moving around andwhatever.

(03:24):
Again, play with intention.
What am I trying to work on?
What I often do is try and getpeople, get students to focus on
their groove.
So when they listen to, forinstance, a backing track and
they're trying to learn how tosolo.
We talk about, for instance,quarter, eighth, and sixteenth
note, and how that's kind of thebread and butter of
improvisation of soloing.
But that means when you hear agroove, and you get in there,

(03:49):
boo-da-dum, bum, dun, ba-do-da,do, bump, bump, ba-da-da-da-dun.
You know, do you have theskills to be able to do that?
Do you have the creativeness inyour head to be able to think
of those sorts of things?
But once all of that is is isplanned out, do you have the
ability to be able to connectvery tightly to that groove, to

(04:09):
that rhythm when you're playing?
Again, maybe it's a littleslower or faster, or, you know,
the groove is this, or, youknow, the style of music is
this.
All of those kinds of thingsare variables.
But working on your tightnessof your groove, of your
strumming, of your picking,being able to find where that
quarter, eighth, sixteenth notething lives, and then being able
to play very much in the pocketof what that is, is really,

(04:31):
really important.
More than just a lick thatyou're playing or a pattern that
you're learning or somethinglike that.
And there's a host of differentways that you can learn how to
do that.
But be aware of that.
For me, that's that's mistakenumber two.
So, number one, if you thinkabout practicing with intention,
sometimes what your goal shouldbe is number two, I need to
really try and focus on mygroove over this backing track
or playing along with this song.

(04:52):
I really need to focus ontrying to create a rhythm that
really locks in.
For me, mistake number threewould be avoiding weaknesses.
Oftentimes when we grab theguitar and we quote unquote
noodle, we're we're working onthings that we've done before.
And again, there's nothingwrong with that reinforcement.

(05:12):
I think that's wonderful.
Okay.
But we need to focus on ourproblem spots too.
Like where are my valleys in myplaying?
Where are the dips in myplaying, my weak spots, so I can
try and get those start tostart elevating to kind of reach
these other things that I'mworking on.
You've got to find a balance inthat.
And if you think about again,the the intention of your

(05:35):
practice, you can try and starttrying to figure out where those
problems are and start, youknow, again, elevating those.
Sometimes the problem is youdon't know what you don't know.
You don't know where the weakspots are.
And uh, you know, that's athat's a big problem.
And so we need to figure outwell, where are those weak spots
and what do we need to be ableto do to start building or

(05:55):
mending those so they can start,you know, increasing in skill
set to sort of, you know,balance out the things that
you're already good at withthese things that you're not so
good at.
Sometimes they're physicalthings, sometimes they're
conceptual things, you know,maybe it's a theoretical thing
or a visual thing that you'restruggling with.
But those weaknesses, it'simportant that we suss out those
weaknesses and figure out whatwe need to do with those.

(06:16):
Mistake number four for me ismissing the bigger picture of
connecting skills together.
So, for instance, a very easyexample of this would be um
maybe a particular student issaying, I want to learn how to
play songs, but every time I tryand play along, it fails.

(06:36):
Like I just can't play along,or I get lost, or I don't know
where I'm at.
Again, it's it's breaking downthe pieces and independently
working on those and thenbringing them back collectively
so they can work together.
Okay.
So a song, for instance, forme, I always think of a song as
having kind of three points.

(06:56):
Okay, three, like a triangle.
One point is the song itself.
Like, do I know how the songgoes?
Am I am I able to, you know,listen to the song enough to get
to where the point is where Iknow, okay, it's in the verse,
and here comes the bridge, orhere comes the chorus, and
there's this little weird thinghere that they do, a breakdown

(07:17):
or something, and then it comesback into the song.
Like, the more I can listen tothe song and get used to kind of
the bigger picture, theoverarching picture of what this
song is doing.
Not just, oh, I gotta learnthis song, so let me grab a
chord chart and whatever, butactually getting to know the
song, becoming comfortable withthat song as a musician.
Part two of that would be well,what components do I need to

(07:39):
play this song?
Once I've got this song in myhead and I'm listening to it and
all that kind of stuff.
Now I start doing some researchand figure out, well, I need
this chord and this chord andthis chord or you know, this
lick or whatever it might be.
These are the tools that Ineed, and these are the things
that I need to work on with myfretting hand.
Am I capable of doing those?
Is there a you know adisconnect somewhere between the

(08:00):
movement of the G and the Cchord or being able to pick this
thing, whatever it might be?
So those are the tools.
The third part is the rhythm,the strumming, the picking,
whatever those things are that Ineed to be able to do, the
groove, which we just talkedabout before.
For me, I try and teach peopleto independently break those
things down.
Don't just try and jump in, andbecause you've been working on

(08:22):
G and C and D or something likethat, you hope this whole thing
works.
If it does, that's great.
But if it doesn't, at leastsomewhere along your journey,
instead of just saying, well, Isuck, I can't do this, what we
need to do is figure out, well,where's the where's the
disconnect?
Right?
Why isn't this working?
So that way we can understandthat playing a song isn't just
this, it's actually littlepieces that we have to learn how

(08:45):
to do independently and thenbuild them back up together.
For me, mistake number five isvery important.
Not getting feedback, notgetting assessments of your
playing.
Are you progressing?
You know, are things gettingbetter?
Where are the problem spots?
All of those things, being ableto get regular assessments of

(09:06):
your playing, you know, withoutfear or, you know, worry about
judgment, getting somebody thatcan say, look, I want to see you
play so I can tell you whatyou're doing right, and I can
also give you some suggestionson the things that that we might
be able to do to optimize someof these things that you're
doing.
Okay.
You don't know what you don'tknow.
You can't fix what you can'thear.
You know, we all have blindspots.

(09:27):
And so to get assessment fromsomeone else that maybe has been
in this situation um, you know,before and would know more
about this, to be able to lookand say, you know, send me a
video, let me see what you'redoing, or let me watch you play.
You know, we're on Zoom orsomething, let me watch you
play, let me, you know, hear youplay over this backing track or
whatever it might be, and letme give you some suggestions of
some things that I think wouldhelp you.

(09:48):
The more regular assessments ofyour playing, the more feedback
you can get, the more you cancontinually optimize what it is
that you're trying to do.
One bonus mistake that I'd liketo talk about is quite simply
just comparison.
You know, getting lost in thisworld of I'm never gonna be good

(10:11):
enough.
The people I see on YouTube arealways doing this, or you know,
whatever it might be, or I'llnever, I'll never be good
enough.
You know, I love Steve Ray Von,but I'll never be able to play
like that, or you know, I'llnever be able to play in a band.
First of all, you got to giveyourself some grace.
Second of all, is comparisoncan be beneficial to a certain
point, but very detrimental ifyou go beyond that.

(10:32):
You know, your your goals, yourjourney, your progress is
yours, you know, it's learningwho you are and what your issues
are, where your struggles are,and then being able to fix that
and optimize that journey to getyou to the next level, to get
you where you want to go.
If you start developing a senseof confidence in yourself

(10:54):
through your comfortability ofyour fretboard in whatever way
that that, you know, thatpertains to you, that's where
all of a sudden you startgetting to another level of
playing because you're notworried about what everybody
else is thinking, or I'll neverbe able to do this.
Maybe you won't.
I don't know.
I I don't know anything aboutyour personal journey, but I do
know that so often when I talkto people, they're just

(11:17):
completely limiting thatlimiting themselves because you
know, they're they're so hard onthemselves and they don't see
what they don't see.
Again, because they don't seethe bigger picture, they don't
see that they might only bethree or four steps off from
where they want to go.
They just don't know that anyof these things exist.
So when they practice, they'realways practicing sort of the
um, for lack of a better term,the wrong things, you know, the

(11:40):
same old, same old, thenoodling, whatever it is,
instead of developing theseproblem spots.
So you got to be careful withcomparison.
So to recap this, think aboutthis.
I want you to learn to practicewith intention.
I want you want you to buildyour rhythm and your groove

(12:00):
skills.
Okay.
Deal with your weaknesses, notjust the things that you're good
at, okay?
Learn to connect your skillstogether, understand how to
break them apart and then buildthem so they can come back
together and work.
Um, assessments, feedback arevery much important.
And the last thing for me isjust be careful with that
comparison thing.
Now, for you, if any of thesethings hit home, what I want you

(12:22):
to do is check out the GuitarZoom Academy, okay?
It's designed to fix theseexact things.
We work together, hand in hand,shoulder to shoulder, working
on all of these things, gettingyou structure, getting you
feedback.
You work with a community thathas your back and is excited,
you know, very motivated.
But we're working togetherdaily.
Like we're we're constantlyworking together to get you

(12:43):
where you need to go.
So do me a favor stay positive,keep practicing, and I'll see
you in the next lesson, okay?