A breakthrough that has helped with speed

I discovered something in the last week that has really helped increase my speed so it might be helpful to others who are stuck in the slow lane. I have been playing for about 10 months consistently but have been stuck on a certain uninspiring speed, not able to get any faster. I am a very right handed person so naturally I put the blame on my left hand fingering, thinking it was just slow and uncoordinated. It turns out the main culprit was in my right hand.

When I do alternate picking on a single string or multiple strings without fretting with the left hand, it can be pretty fast, consistent and relaxed. But as soon as the left hand gets involved what was once smooth back and forth picking devolves into a kind of circular stab at the strings with tension coming into the right hand. Apparently my left hand has quite an effect on the motion of my right. It's similar to what happens on the first attempt at tapping your head and rubbing your belly at the same time. Eventually the motion morphs into an uncoordinated mess.

For the past week I've been really isolating the right hand action and trying to feel when and where it starts to break down. Funny enough, when the right hand is acting correctly the left seems to have no trouble keeping up.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has similar experiences or specific breakthroughs that have helped with speed.

That's very interesting. I don't have similar experience but this was interesting to read.

Two things that helped my accuracy, timing and actually hearing the guitar was:

1. Don't look at it.
2. Tap your foot with the beat.

If you look at your left hand you'll mess up with your right and visa versa.

I would get my pick hand going and do a 5 or 6 note Pent. scale section and stop my left hand and make sure my right hand had not changed. I found that some thing were hard for my right hand to do slow also. If you do the same riff or scale at the same speed everytime slowing down can tax your brain as you will want to speed up to your confort zone.

Another way is to train your fretting hand separately, using legato exercises, and to make sure you can perform hammer-ons and pull-offs in time. Then when you apply the picking hand technique, focus on the picking hand and let the fretting hand work in sync with the picking hand.