Technique endurance or looping exercises for classical guitar are an excellent way to add a challenge to a technique you feel confident with. However, do not add endurance exercises to a technique you are still learning as you do not want to incorporate or add bad habits or tension. Instead, once you’ve established a solid confidence with an exercise you can expand that exercise to test your skills in a more challenging setting.
All the examples are from my technique book but feel free to use any of your own exercises or repertoire to accomplish the task. Here’s the YouTube link if you want to watch it there.
When you first learn a technique you want to do it in small fragments and in isolation in order to learn the technique with proper alignment and without tension and to have maximum concentration while executing the movements.
Benefits: Once you feel like you have the technique under control, endurance training can help inform you about factors that might still exist in your playing such as:
- Fatigue and tension
- Lazy and sloppy technique the further I progress
- Compromised hand positions after continuous shifts
- Lack of concentration
- Less refinement
Endurance can teach you how the body reacts to “in context” playing. You might find that you add tension when you should be adding increased refinement, relaxation, and alignment.
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