The Real Reason You’re Not Getting Better at Guitar

Feeling stuck even though you practice daily and binge guitar videos? We’ve been there. The real blocker isn’t effort—it’s the lack of a focused plan that turns scattered experiences into absorbed skills you can trust when it counts.

We unpack why grazing on random lessons rarely leads to lasting progress and show how to shift into targeted learning you can apply today. You’ll hear a clear, four-pillar roadmap for consistent growth: technique you actually need for your style, fretboard understanding that maps to real songs and solos, practical theory that speaks to your ear and hands, and creative playing that breathes with phrasing, dynamics, and feel. Instead of waiting to “know everything” before you solo, you’ll learn how to start small, absorb deeply, and expand with intention.

We also dig into building intentional practice sessions that fit real life. Whether you’ve got 30 minutes or an hour, you’ll learn how to balance maintenance with true elevation, set micro goals that serve macro outcomes, and test absorption so your skills hold up under a backing track or the red light. Expect concrete ideas: bending with a tuner, motif development over a 12-bar form, linking pentatonic shapes across the neck, and using simple theory to navigate keys and chord tones without getting lost.

If you’re ready to replace random scrolling with a plan that compounds, this conversation gives you the structure and mindset to move forward fast—without burning out or bloating your to-do list. Subscribe, share this with a guitarist who needs momentum, and leave a review telling us the one practice change you’ll make this week.

Thanks for being here!! I will continue to do my best to bring you the best, most informative guitar discussions to help you along your guitar journey!

The more you share this podcast with others, the more I can continue to grow this channel and offer the best information and advice I can to you.
Thank you!
Steve

Links:

Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/

• Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus... 
• GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0... 
• Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... . 

Transcript

Why Progress Stalls

Steve 0:35

Hey everybody, Steve Stine from GuitarZoom Academy here. Today I'd like to talk to you about some of the reasons why you might not be getting better at guitar or at least not achieving the goals that you've wanted to achieve. And so what I want to do is just take a little bit of time today and organize your thoughts a little bit and see if this might help you. Okay, so I've got some things written down here I want to go through. The first thing I want to go through is what I call grazing information. Now, basically, what happens with grazing is you find yourself going out on YouTube or something like that and just sifting through videos and watching things and practicing a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Now, don't get me wrong, YouTube can be really, really beneficial. There are some really amazing instructors out there. There's there's instructors out there I watch, okay? They do an amazing job. So it's not that the content is is bad. It's not that. I mean, I'm sure there's some some stuff out there that's probably not very beneficial, but there's all kinds of wonderful stuff out there. Here's the problem is grazing, spending lots of time on YouTube just searching for things, but you don't know what you're looking for. You're just hoping that you're gonna come across this video that's gonna change everything for you. And I again, I can't say that that doesn't happen, but more often than not, I'm assuming that that does not happen. You're just watching random lessons that look interesting, but they're not necessarily what you need. All right. So what we have to do is we have to rethink what we're using YouTube for. YouTube can be a very powerful thing if you know what you need, and then you go out and you search for it and find the right video that matches what it is that you're looking for. That's the problem, is most people don't do that. Most people are just going out there looking up, you know, pentatonic skills or learning pentatonic skills or how to solo or whatever. And there's a billion topics on how to solo, right? The problem is finding what you need. Okay, so that's the big difference, is you've got to be careful with grazing information, just random learning. Now, at the same time, in talking about this, I also want to talk about the importance of experiences versus absorption. And I don't really know how else to say that, but I always tell people the thing is as guitar players, as human beings, we've had a lot of experiences in our life, good and bad, right? Just like guitar playing, we've experienced a lot of different things. We've learned different songs and we've studied out of different books or guitar courses or different videos that we've watched. And oftentimes what happens is we'll jump into something and spend a little bit of time there, and then we need another fix. So we leave that and we get something else. Or maybe that thing wasn't exactly what we needed. So we practiced it for a while and then we, you know, dropped it off, and then we went to something else. These are what I call experiences. I don't really have a better name for it. Absorption is a very different thing where you're looking for something that you need or you want that you know is beneficial for you. And this is how I think about, you know, using, you know, YouTube and different kinds of things like that is I know what I'm looking for, and then I need to go find that thing. And once I find whatever it is that I need, the real secret, in my opinion, to trying to get better as a guitar player is absorption. You've got to take that concept, that lick, that scale, that whatever it is. It doesn't matter what it is, and you've got to absorb it. It's got to become part of you. Otherwise, you're gonna lose it, or when you go to perform in front of other people, you're still gonna feel uncomfortable. You're gonna, you're gonna lack confidence in yourself, all those sorts of things. Think of it this way: if you kind of know something, you kind of don't know something. That's the problem. If you want to get good at whatever it is you want to do, you don't have to do everything. You don't have to know everything. You don't have to be the smartest person with the most theory, or the person that knows all of the scales and modes and exotic scales and blah, blah, blah. Again, I'm not saying anything's wrong with that stuff. What I'm saying is you've got to start learning how to build you. Who are you? What is it that you want to be able to do and what is needed to get you there? That's what you need to focus on. That's what you need to absorb. Once you develop those things, then you can start searching out more things. You know, what do you need to do to elevate yourself from that place that you're at right now? The problem with most people is they never get to that place because they're just randomly learning different kinds of things. They're all over the place. That's the problem. So, grazing number one. Number two is which is kind of a subsection of grazing, which is understanding the difference between experiences and actual absorption. Okay. So the next thing I want you to understand, the second thing is first thing is grazing. The second thing is lack of organized practice, okay? Organized development of where you want to go. And for me, there's really what I call columns or pillars. There's really four things that you need to think about. Number one is technical, physical skills. Okay, that's the first thing is your technical, physical skills, whether it's chords or scales or picking or transitions or mechanics or certain technique or strength of fingers, whatever physicality that you need at the level that you need it. A shredder is going to have a completely different trajectory in terms of its physical practice than maybe a old school, you know, Chicago blues player. Right? None of it is better or worse. It's just what is it that you need to develop the things that you need to get to where you want to go? Okay. So pillar one or column one is the physical skills that you have and what needs to be developed. The second thing is fretboard understanding, visualization, you know, the the again in a context of what you need. You know, do you need to know where the notes are? Do you need to be able to visualize the cage system? Do you need to be able to visualize certain scales across the fretboard, right? Positions of different scales. How much of that do you need? Right? It's easy for us to get caught in these long-term, I'm going to talk about macro and micro in just a second, but these long-term plays of, well, I want to learn a solo, so I have to learn all my notes on my guitar, which may or may not be true. You can learn a solo without knowing where all the notes are in your guitar. I'm not saying learning all the notes on your guitar is bad. Of course it's good. But what's the right order of things to do? Because what happens with a lot of guitar players is we keep setting up all these long-term plays. Someday I'm going to do this. Someday I want to learn how to do this. Well, how much of these things do you need before you can start doing whatever this is? Right? You don't need to spend three years learning scales before you start learning how to solo. You can start learning very little about scales and start learning how to solo. Of course, you want to keep developing those scales and your understanding and your visualization, all those kind of things. But that doesn't mean you have to wait until you're done with all of that before you start actually learning how to solo. That's the problem. Same with skills, physics, the column one or pillar one, if you will, or level one, I should just call it. The physical skills, the physical skills will go on forever. You can always get better, but you can't wait until this thing is absolutely perfect before you do this. You got to start. That's why I have these levels that build this pillar or this column. So your physical skills, your fretboard visualization and comprehension of the fretboard. The third level for me is music theory. Okay. How things work, right? In a way that makes sense to you. If you're going to jam with people, you don't need to have, you know, third-year Berkeley jazz theory to be able to jam with some guys over, you know, Tush by Z Z Top. But if somebody does say to you, hey, this is in the Kia G, that should mean something to you, both in here and on your fretboard. So you can start with practical, fundamental, real-world theory, and then start moving from there. What else do you need? Well, some people really love theory. Great. Then that's something that you need to make sure that's a priority in your practice in an organized manner. Theory on its own is what we could consider a language. We have to learn how to apply that to the instrument and to our musicality. Okay, whether you're a songwriter or jamming or, you know, whatever it might be, or even just playing chords and playing songs. But the point is that just learning theory for the sake of theory, that might be interesting to you, and there's nothing wrong with that. But unless you're actually applying it to yourself and you're playing, they're disconnected from each other. So the goal with all of these levels is to create a column or a pillar, right? That's the whole point. So everything's working together. So you've got your physical skills, you've got your visualization of the fretboard, how the fretboard works in a way that you need. And then theory. What theory do you need to be able to get the job done of whatever it is you're trying to do? And the fourth level for me is creative playing, musicality. Okay. That's a completely different conversation. And most people want to get here. The mistake they make is they think the in order to get there, um, you know, the answer to getting here is more scales or more fretboard development or whatever. Again, I can't say that that's necessarily wrong in particular cases, but holistically, that's not the problem. The problem is you're not thinking about phrasing or dynamics, musical choices, expression, you know, all of those kind of things that make you sound more musical. What is it that people do that makes that scale sound musical, right? Whoever it is, David Gilmore or Joe Bonamasa or whoever it is you like, right? Doesn't matter. How do they approach it in a way that sounds musical when you play it? It doesn't sound musical. What are you missing? The answer isn't technique. The answer isn't visualization of the fretboard. These are parts of it, these are beneficial to it, no doubt about it. But it's learning to think about things on a musical level, on a creative level. Okay? So that's the kind of stuff I want you to think about. The last thing I want to tell you is when you practice, practice with intention. Okay? You're not just sitting down and playing stuff or running through the same thing over and over and over. You have three choices as a guitar player, really, three choices as a human being, but three choices as a guitar player. You're either maintaining, you're elevating, or you're backsliding. Those are the three options you got. What most people want to avoid is backsliding. So what they do is they maintain. They play the same things over and over and over, and then they sift through and try and find stuff, and then it doesn't work, and then they keep going. In order to elevate, you got to have a plan. You got to know what it is that you're working on. Okay. That's, I'm telling you, that's how you save time. Figure out what you where you are, where you want to go, and what you need to get there. Okay. And then you focus on those. And then you keep adjusting as you go. As your experiences keep expanding, right? And you keep learning and you keep absorbing, and your goals, you know, you start feeling that forward motion, then we need to reassess. Well, what do you need now? What kind of adjustments do we need to make? Hey, you're stuck in the mud with this thing. What do we need to do to get you out of the mud? Right? That's what we need to do. That's that's how you make real progress. It starts with intention, knowing what it is that you're working on. When you wake up and you're going to practice that day, what are you working on and why? Right? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What are your goals? And this is where micro and macro come in. From a macro level, you're trying to see the bigger picture of the things that you need. But on the micro level, you're trying to figure out what isms you really need to try and focus on. You see, that's really important. You know, is do you need to work more on dynamics, even though you thought what you needed is to develop more fretboard? And maybe you do. Maybe you need both of these things, right? That's the whole point. The last thing I'll say about this, and I don't want to take up your whole day here, but the last thing I'll say is you've got to think about the amount of time that you have to practice and what it is that you're practicing or what it is that you're focusing on once you get intention. Because these things need to balance each other. If you're practicing 30 minutes a day, which is fine, if you're doing the right thing, if you're working on the right stuff, you can make an effective 30-minute practice. You can.

unknown 13:36

Okay.

Steve 13:37

If you're meant, you know, if you're just noodling and, you know, playing the same songs over and over and over, you're maintaining, right? That's what you're doing. For those 30 minutes, that's what you're doing. So we have to be smart about this. And here's my point: if you have 30 minutes to practice, but you have 78 things on your on your practice list, you're not going to get to all this stuff. You got to be smart about the amount of time that you're spending and the things that you need to focus on in that amount of time. Now, needless to say, if you have an hour to practice, you can get a lot more done. Or you can focus even more on those macro and micro things that you really need to get to where you're going. Because you have more time doesn't necessarily mean you should work on more things. That might give you more time to really focus in and absorb the things that you really need to get to where you're going. Okay. So hopefully this helps you a little bit in understanding how to organize yourself and really start making forward motion with yourself. Okay. It's not that inherently videos are bad or YouTube is bad or guitar courses are bad. They're not. Again, there's a lot of really amazing players out there, really amazing teachers that you can learn from, but you need a plan. You need to start figuring out who you are, where you're going, and what you need to get there. And that's where people get lost. Now, if you need help, Guitar Zoom has a thing called GuitarZoom Academy. It might work for you, it might not. Okay. What you can do, there's going to be a link in the in the description somewhere that you can click on and you can learn all about it. I have a video that you can watch. It's very transparent, tells you exactly how things work, what the cost is, all of those kind of things. And if it's something that really, you know, if you're passionate about playing guitar and you're frustrated with being stuck and you want to be, you want to do this, check it out. See if it's something that fits you. And if it doesn't, that's cool. But if it does, you know, you and I can get together and we can have a conversation about it. So, you know, watch the video, read the document, learn all about it, and then make a choice on whether or not this is something that you think would fit you. So take care, stay positive, keep practicing, and I'll talk to you soon, okay?