Practicing more but getting worse ?

[Alicia Willis]

https://bulletproofmusician.com/why-practicing-more-can-lead-to-worse-performance/

I recently had this feeling myself and found this article highly intriguing especially for those of us with ADHD. I just wanted to share in the hopes it may help someone else as well.

 

[ari.mac]

Very very interesting. I have not ADHD...that I know of, but exeperienced it just yesterday (and other times too )...when I started messing up the things I wasn't messing up before, I got the message that I needed a break

 

[Ethan Keeling]

Sometimes ill practise things none stop everyday, then i just cant play them for shit! I have a break from that for like a week then suddenly I can play it haha. Also a reason why I dont like to practise for more than a couple hours a day, more than that I feel you make silly mistakes that piss you off!

 

[idssdi]

I definetely notice this sometimes, I can practice something for hours on end and not make progress while If I try again like a day or a week later I suddenly do a lot better!

To my knowledge I don't have ADHD or anything like that but I do generally believe that breaks are important to really progress

 

[John Robinson]

It seems like the more i learn and practice the worse i get...its very discouraging

 

[Rad Synner]

Well yes but isn't that basically all about muscle memory?

I mean, it's literally how it works. Letting the muscle do what they have been trained to do. Letting your muscle learn what you want them to learn.

Because in the end, that's the whole point. making so that the neural pathway is as short as possible and that's not possible when you overthink about it and you dont let some time for your muscles to learn.

In other words, you have to create motor skills for your body so that they can become reflexes and not have to do any conscious effort.

Guys, I would highly suggest you all to read up on muscle memory and fine motor memory because that is what is involved in learning music. Once you understand how your own body works and how it learns things, its going to be much easier for you to do exercises that goes with your body physical learning curve instead of doing things that go against it.

The work of how the conscious and unconscious mind works made a huge difference in my approach to life in general but in this case specifically, music. And I can only speak for myself but I have made huge progress. And I don't have an inner talent

 

[Alicia Willis]

Sometimes ill practise things none stop everyday, then i just cant play them for shit! I have a break from that for like a week then suddenly I can play it haha. Also a reason why I dont like to practise for more than a couple hours a day, more than that I feel you make silly mistakes that piss you off!

THIS !!! This is exactly what I was doing that made go googling because I thought I was weird lol.

 

[Alicia Willis]

Well yes but isn't that basically all about muscle memory?

I mean, it's literally how it works. Letting the muscle do what they have been trained to do. Letting your muscle learn what you want them to learn.

Because in the end, that's the whole point. making so that the neural pathway is as short as possible and that's not possible when you overthink about it and you dont let some time for your muscles to learn.

In other words, you have to create motor skills for your body so that they can become reflexes and not have to do any conscious effort.

Guys, I would highly suggest you all to read up on muscle memory and fine motor memory because that is what is involved in learning music. Once you understand how your own body works and how it learns things, its going to be much easier for you to do exercises that goes with your body physical learning curve instead of doing things that go against it.

The work of how the conscious and unconscious mind works made a huge difference in my approach to life in general but in this case specifically, music. And I can only speak for myself but I have made huge progress. And I don't have an inner talent

This is a really good point ! And it’s actually the reason I’ve been practicing the same piece so much lately, like literally all day day for the past few days (with breaks of course lol) And while I can tell I have developed some muscle memory, after playing through the same thing multiple times it is like the body goes into auto pilot but at the same time it’s like with each repetition after so many it just gets sloppy and worse.
So I’m assuming there’s a fine line with the repetitions being beneficial and where you just reach physical and mental burnout.

 

[Rad Synner]

This is a really good point ! And it’s actually the reason I’ve been practicing the same piece so much lately, like literally all day day for the past few days (with breaks of course lol) And while I can tell I have developed some muscle memory, after playing through the same thing multiple times it is like the body goes into auto pilot but at the same time it’s like with each repetition after so many it just gets sloppy and worse.
So I’m assuming there’s a fine line with the repetitions being beneficial and where you just reach physical and mental burnout.

Well of course! Anything with excessive repetition gets annoying and can lead to a ''burn out''. I mean, lets take your brain as an individual person. You start teaching him something slowly and he starts to get it. At one point he got it but you keep on repeating to him the same thing over and over again and at one point, he is not stimulated anymore. He got the point but now you keep repeating it to him!

That's where the break is important, once the brain is saturated, and the links have been made in the neural system and motor skills, the brain will then relay it to those and move on to something else.

That's why a lot of people can play something fast and it seems like they are not struggling with it. Because the truth is, they aren't even thinking about it at this point. The muscles took over and they just know what to do because that is what they have been trained to do! And that's why often, if you start thinking too much about you are doing, you are going to start failing more. I like to think of it as the brain meddling over in the muscle memory system and not allowing them to do their job properly.

In other words, imagine a boss constantly coming in to check over that you are doing your job properly but by asking you if its up to performance all the time, it distracts yous and you can do it a full capacity!

 

[ari.mac]

Well of course! Anything with excessive repetition gets annoying and can lead to a ''burn out''. I mean, lets take your brain as an individual person. You start teaching him something slowly and he starts to get it. At one point he got it but you keep on repeating to him the same thing over and over again and at one point, he is not stimulated anymore. He got the point but now you keep repeating it to him!

That's where the break is important, once the brain is saturated, and the links have been made in the neural system and motor skills, the brain will then relay it to those and move on to something else.

That's why a lot of people can play something fast and it seems like they are not struggling with it. Because the truth is, they aren't even thinking about it at this point. The muscles took over and they just know what to do because that is what they have been trained to do! And that's why often, if you start thinking too much about you are doing, you are going to start failing more. I like to think of it as the brain meddling over in the muscle memory system and not allowing them to do their job properly.

In other words, imagine a boss constantly coming in to check over that you are doing your job properly but by asking you if its up to performance all the time, it distracts yous and you can do it a full capacity!

That makes sense! I'm guilty of over thinking while playing and I noticed from time to time that the more I thought I was focusing on something the more I messed it up. I'm gonna try to stop it and let my muscle memory work

 

[Lauren D]

If I practice the same song over and over and over it gets really stressful. So I take a break and play something else that's I know to encourage myself. Like some smashing pumpkins or rhcp or prob my fav song to play which is buried alive. Then I go back to what i was doing and I feel 100x better than I was before. That's what I did for hours while trying to learn tornado of souls.