How I Use Muscle Memory Training To Teach Older Adults Guitar

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But I have been helping students in their 50s, 60s, 70s, even into their 80s learn how to have fun playing the guitar. And I do it through a step by step system that uses simple science.

Let's be honest, the best time to learn something is when we were younger because our. Our brain is developing so much faster and it's creating new neural pathways. Now when we get to about our mid 20s, this starts falling off and we start creating those pathways at a much slower pace. But it never stops. Recent research shows that you can develop new pathways even much later in life by doing new things, like learning the guitar. Now, in my seven level system, I talk a lot about something called muscle memory or something referred to as neuroplasticity is the scientific term. Let me refer to my official definition that I wrote down as it refers to the structural and functional changes in the brain that happen as a result of new experiences. Okay? So learning the guitar is a new experience for a lot of people. And when you learn something new in older age, especially something like music, it can help keep your brain young. It can help you fight things like depression and stress and just make you feel good overall. So what I do with students, especially my older adults, is we focus on this. Building neuroplasticity, building muscle memory through repetition, okay? We're all in a rush to do things perfectly and have it be good right now. But we do have to understand that as we get older, sometimes things have to go a little bit slower. So I'm going to show you some exercises I work on with my older students to help them build in repetition and build these neural pathways a little bit faster. So the first thing is to keep things simple, okay? Because the more information you put into your brain, the more time it takes to process that information. So keeping things simple in the beginning will help with processing that information. So we're going to start off with a very simple spider exercise that is kind of like a first step. And all I want to do is pair two fingers at a time, okay? It's very easy to move two fingers. Moving three or four fingers at the same time can be very tricky. So what we're going to do is we're going to start at the fifth fret of the guitar, and we're going to use fingers 1 and 2 on frets 5 and 6. And all I want you to do is with your picking hand. We're going to do two down picks, one, two on the top string, and you're Going to play frets 5, 6 on that top string. Then we're going to move down to the A string, 5, 6, down again.

Down again to the G string, 5, 6, up again, down to the B string, down to the E string, okay? And then we're just going to come back up. Five, six, five, six, five, six, five, six, five, six. Now, that might be hard for you, okay? Don't forget to breathe. Breathing is very important. I have a lot of students. They hold their breath and they get through, and then they realize they haven't taken another breath. So that's it. That's. The first one is just your first singer and your second finger, getting those two working together. Next, we're going to do the first finger and the third finger. So frets 5 and 8. 1 3. Try to relax your hand as you're going through these exercises, okay? What I recommend is inhale on the first note, exhale on the second note, so you can practice relaxing.

Okay? It's not about going fast, okay? Developing new neural pathways is not about going fast. It's about going slow and deliberate.

Now, understand, you are going to make mistakes, and that's okay. And that's part of this process of developing new neural pathways. You are going to make mistakes. Okay? So we've done 1, 2, 1 3, and we're doing this really weird one one four. So we're just going to getting these fingers moving, okay? And this is something I do a lot with my students in my course.

Because finger dexterity is so important, and this concept of muscle memory is so important. I think a lot of guitar teachers skip over it.

You can see I'm just going nice and slow, okay? And for you, starting off, because your fingers are doing a new mechanic, this might be too fast for you, so feel free to go even slower. But the key is to just pair up each finger with the first finger and just starting to get them moving. Okay? And the great thing about this, you know, if you're sitting on the couch and your spouse is there and you don't want to make any noise, you can do this without your picking hand. Okay? You can just go down the strings, gently tapping the frets. Okay? You can barely hear my guitar, but I'm still working on this new mechanic of pressing into these frets. Because this is. I mean, yeah, maybe you're used to holding your coffee mug, but this is kind of like a weird new thing. I have a lot of students, they're like, oh, I typed for years, I can do this. And then they go to play the guitar. And they're like, this is totally different than typing. So again, working on this new mechanic of just pressing into the strings is a great start. Okay. And you're going to have to do this a number of times. I would recommend doing all the way through a couple times. So let's do that. Let's just take it from the top and go all the way through. We're going to do first finger, second finger, first, third, first, fourth. All right, all the way through. Here we go. One, two, here we go. Nice.

Next one again. You heard I made a mistake there. I hit another string by accident. Don't stop. Keep going.

See, I've been playing guitar for how long and I still make mistakes. It's totally fine. It happens. Okay, here's Pinky.

Don't forget to breathe.

So what are we doing here? We've worked on all the fingers. Okay. So now when you go to play chords, hopefully you'll be able to move them around a lot quicker. Because that's a big issue that many students have is they just can't get those chord changes to move fast enough. So this next exercise I'm going to show you is, is something that really focuses on chord changes in the mechanic and the muscle memory behind chord changes, which is just moving your fingers up and down the strings. Okay, so same thing. We're going to start at the fifth fret. G string. Okay. And we're going to put all of our fingers in frets. 5, 6, 7, 8. Okay. If this is too much of a stretch for you, just move it up to 7, 8, 9 and 10. It doesn't matter what frets you're on. Just. It's really the distance up and down that counts. Alright, so we're all here on the G string. 5, 6, 7, 8. And we're going to take the first finger and just go up to the top string and then to the bottom string. We're mimicking what we do with chord changes. Okay. You can do that like 10 times and then go to the next finger, up and down 10 times. And then you're going to try and do this third finger. And you're going to feel like you don't know what's going on. So usually the third finger is the hardest finger you may need to assist. And your hand might be so tense and so tight. Don't forget to breathe that you maybe need to hold the other fingers down. That's how hard I used to have to do that. When I first learned this, I'd been playing Guitar for many years, and I could not move my third finger like this. I could not do. I used to have to relax my hand down. So what happens for most people is they get here and the finger gets stuck. Breathe, shake the finger out, relax it down. Okay? And then same thing for the pinky. Now some people are like, lauren, I can't. I can't reach up to the sixth string. If you can only get to the fifth, that's okay. As your hand relaxes more and you stretch out, you will be able to get to the sixth string. So I always tell people 10 to 20 times per finger, do not overdo this because you could get carpal tunnel. Okay? So just don't forget. Breathe, relax. Never force your fingers, okay? Never force your fingers. Just up and down, okay? This is an exercise that I teach in my course and I have another level that comes after this. But first you got to get the fingers moving and then go back to your chords. Practice your chords. Okay? Again, just the repetition of playing your chords. In the beginning, your fingers are going to have no muscle memory for these chords. Remember, we're building new neural pathways and it's going to take some time. It's not going to happen overnight. So for a lot of you, it's going to be frustrating because you can see, you can see visually where you want your fingers to go, and you're going to know, oh, this didn't go to the right spot. That's okay. You can fix it. As long as you keep correcting it, that's okay. One of my favorite quotes is from Bruce Lee, and he says, I'm not scared of the man who's done 10,000 kicks. Scared of the man who's done one kick 10,000 times. And this is what I teach students in the beginning learn less chords. All right? There are so many chords out there that you can learn. I have students who used to take lessons with other teachers and they'd come in with this giant chord sheet of 20 chords and they're like, oh, yeah, my guitar teacher told me to learn all of these. And I always tell people, like, would you able to remember a 20 digit password or four digit password? And obviously the answer is like, well, four digits. Yeah, I can remember four digits. Great, let's work with four chords. All right. In the first four chords, I teach students. I teach them a two finger E minor chord, a two finger C chord, a two finger D chord, and a two finger G chord. Lauren, why two fingers? Because it's easier to move two fingers than three a lot of guitar teachers, a lot of courses out there. They're going to throw you right on the C chord. Okay? It's really hard to move one finger, never mind three of them at the same time. It is very hard. And that's why we want to work on some of these dexterity exercises. Start building up that neuroplasticity, start building up that muscle memory, this new movement for your hands, so that when you get to cords, it's not as foreign. Okay. It's still kind of weird, but it's not as foreign. But also, when I show people E minor to C, I just move one finger. E minor to C, one finger, E minor to G, move one finger. People are like, can you do that? And it's like, yes, yes you can. Eventually we will graduate and we will play the full C chord and the full G chord. But in the beginning, just to get started and get those fingers moving, to have fun. Who cares? Who cares if you play two finger chords for a couple weeks? It's just a stepping stone. We will get there. Now, in regards to chords, in repetition on chords, something else you can do while you're just sitting watching tv. Okay. I. I usually do not recommend practicing while watching tv. I'd rather you focus. But if you can get to the point where you can watch TV and change chords on the guitar, you've probably developed your muscle memory pretty well. So E minor to C and I would just sit there. You don't even have to strum. Okay. Just focus on watching the left hand and when you get comfortable with it. Okay. When you get comfortable with that, try closing your eyes and then check yourself. Did you hit the right spot? Did you get the right string? If not, watch it again. Okay. Do it maybe like 10 times and then say, okay, I'm going to close my eyes. Did you get the right string? Awesome. So we're practicing to develop muscle memory and trust the feel of our hand. That's how I can. I can look at the camera, change chords and know exactly where I am. I can do chord changes in the air. You can see my fingers. I can make a C chord in the air. If you tried to do that as a beginner, your fingers would probably be flat. I can actually do this because I have the muscle memory in my hands to do that same thing with this two fingered G chord. Okay. We play E minor G. I'm gonna watch it a few times. Great. Now I'm gonna look away from the guitar. I'm gonna close my eyes. Move that finger. Did I Hit it. Right. Yes, you did. And that's how you start building your muscle memory. And this is what it is. It's repetition. And then you can start strumming. Okay. I'm less concerned in the beginning about the chords sounding correct, because in the beginning, that's what your chords are gonna sound like, and that's totally normal. And they'll probably sound like that for three to six months or nine months, depending on how quickly you can build this muscle memory. But understand, that's normal. Okay. And if you're expecting your chords to sound perfect in the first three months, you might want to lower your expectations just a little bit. They'll sound pretty good, but they're not going to sound perfect for a little while. Just as a note. All right, so you've been practicing just moving your fingers. Now we're going to add strums to it to make sure it sounds good. Okay. Rather you work on the mechanics. Mechanics the movement first, and then we can figure out cleaning up the chords later. Something else you can do. And you can notice I'm doing a lot of things that you can do without needing to strum or play your guitar if you're someplace. I had a student who used to bring his guitar to work with him, and he's like, I used to just do these exercises and not strum. And it was fun. So another thing you can do is you can just sit here. They're kind of called, like, finger burpees is what I call them, or chord burpees with my students. And you're just trying again to develop the repetition of where is the location of this chord on the guitar. Okay. So if I have an E minor chord, I'm going to visually set it. So I'm using visual here. And then I'm going to start slowly lifting my fingers off the strings. I'm only lifting them, you know, maybe like eighth of an inch, you know, a few millimeters. And then I'm just pressing the strings back down. Okay. As you get comfortable, you can start moving them, you know, maybe a centimeter or, like, you know, a quarter inch, half inch. Okay. Then you start moving it an inch, you know, a few centimeters. See, I am metric and standard. I can communicate in both languages. That's my science background. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Lauren Bateman, and I don't have a degree in music. Actually, my degrees are in biology and archaeology. I used to work for a pharmaceutical company, so I love science, and that's why I think this is so cool. And that's why I kind of teach with science in the background of what I'm teaching. But you can see here, just by doing this, we are teaching ourselves to move. Okay, and here we go. Now I'm taking my hand fully off and I'm just working on the process. Here's the C chord. Alright. And if you're just doing the two fingered C chord. That's right, move two fingers. Again, we are working on repetition. That's the science behind this, is that repetition takes time. And going back to that Bruce Lee quote, you might have to do this 10,000 times for it to finally sit in. You're not going to do it 10 times and all of a sudden you're going to have muscle memory and all these neural pathways are going to develop. No, I recommend, this is what I recommend to students. Pick two cords at a time. So if you're going to do E minor to C, practice those for one to two minutes. Set up a practice routine, just back and forth one to two minutes. Great. Move to your next pair. E minor to G, E minor to G. Okay. And then E minor to D, E minor to D. Or you move back and forth two chords at a time. Remember less information, easier for the brain to process. And then what you do is you put it towards a metronome and you try and speed yourself up and make yourself go faster. Okay. But in the beginning, again, you need to get the mechanics down, you need to get the muscle memory down and you need to develop dexterity in your fretting hands. So don't be in a rush to go crazy with your strumming patterns. Because the bottom line is if your chord changes are not fast enough, that's going to be what holds you up. If you want to do really cool strumming patterns.

You got to be able to change those chord fast enough. And in order to change the cords fast enough, you need to relax. And in order to relax, you need to develop muscle memory, you need to develop those new neural pathways. And these are some of the exercises that I go over with my students in my seven level system. Like I said, most of my students are probably in their 60s and 70s and trust me, they are finding success with focusing on finger dexterity and developing muscle memory. They're playing songs, they're doing things they never thought possible. They had tried learning guitar on their own before. They had taken lessons with other guitar teachers and weren't successful. And they just said, you know, the slower pace of your lessons is really helping me I love the structure. I love the step by step method being this is step one, this is step two, this is step three. It's called the seven level system. And there's seven levels you go through kind of like martial arts, where you start with the, the white belt, then you get the yellow belt, the orange belt, all the way up to black belt. Well, that's what the seven level system is. It's a step by step system that takes you from being an absolute beginner. And even if you've been playing on your own for a while, I've had many students who've gone through and said, wow, even the found foundation items, the fundamentals, you helped me a lot with that, like how to set up your guitar strap correctly, how to hold your guitar pick, a lot of things some of their teachers never went over with them. And you graduate and you're more of like a late beginner, early intermediate student. You're able to play songs, you're able to finger pick, and you actually feel good. Someone will come in from the other room, your spouse will come in from the other room and be like, hey, were you just playing whatever the song was, you know, were you just playing Horse with no Name? Were you just playing the Eagles? Was that a Beatles song? And it's really encouraging and exciting to hear feedback like that from people who are in the other room who when you started were like, yeah, keep practicing. And now you're like, this is awesome. So if you're looking for a little bit more of a step by step system that was developed with older learners in mind. Okay, we move a little bit slower. Scroll down to the description below. Check out my seven level system. I would love to help you finally learn how to have fun playing your favorite songs on the guitar. Hope to see you in a lesson real soon.