Lauren Bateman teaches older adults that slow fingers come from lack of muscle memory, not age. She shows how to place basic chords one finger at a time and recommends finger push-ups to build the movements into your hands. Speed comes naturally once the muscle memory forms.
If you feel like your fingers are too low, well, there's a reason for it. So let me tell you the truth about why you might have some slow fingers, especially if you're an older adult. I work with a lot of older adults ages 50 plus, and they're like, my fingers just don't work the way they did. And while that's true, playing the guitar is a totally new mechanic, so your fingers have absolutely zero muscle memory. So whether you're 20 years old, 30 years old, 60 years old, or 70 years old, it's going to be difficult to play these chords. Okay, you can see my hand here moving multiple fingers at the same time. That can be very, very difficult. Difficult in the beginning because you don't have the muscle memory for it. So in order to build muscle memory, we have to go slow first, and we have to teach the fingers where to press on the string. So for example, if you wanted to learn an E minor chord, you would put your first finger on the A string at the 2nd fret, and right below it, your 2nd finger on the D string on the 2nd fret. Okay, and what you would do is you would keep doing that one by one. Okay, putting the fingers on, making sure they get in the right place, right strings. Maybe it sounds good, maybe it doesn't, but eventually you're going to work on Just focusing on lifting the fingers slowly. Because see, I can make chords in the air. So that's a C chord, that's an E minor chord. I can do a G chord. Okay, I can do those in the air. But in the beginning, if you try to do a C chord in the air, your hand's probably gonna fall flat. It doesn't have the muscle strength or the muscle memory to make that chord and form it in the air. So that's what slows people down a lot in the beginning is because you're building these chords like this, one finger at a time. Eventually, so like on my C chord, I can really get all those fingers to hit almost at the same time. Same with E minor. My D chord, my third finger usually does come last, but for the most part, I can get these fingers to hit much faster and much more succinctly. You won't be able to do that in the beginning. You are going to be building these chords one finger at a time, but that's okay. Just go slow, work on these little finger push-ups is what I call them, little finger push-ups to build in the muscle memory. And the more you do it, the faster it will come. And if you're looking for a step-by-step system for learning the guitar, go over to laurenbateman.com and check out my free guitar crash course where I I guarantee you'll be playing real music in only 14 days.
