The Foolproof 4 Step Method for Fixing Your WEAK Hand

stop worrying about

your

slow and clumsy

hand

that can't keep up with the other, let's deal with it, this is the

method

by which I introduce each of my students and it really has a success rate of 99, if not 100 , and if you follow these

step

s you will get the same results too, let's start if you have a

weak

hand

, chances are it hasn't magically gotten stronger throughout

your

practice, unless you've intentionally worked on it, that's what tends to happen, there is a commercial principle. where you find what's working in your business and you focus on what's working and you know, you leave behind the things that aren't like 80 20 in a way, but don't really work as well with our practice when we're trying to To eliminate a

weak

hand, we have to intentionally focus on what we can because it is our weakest link and until we fix it, it will always be there, always dragging us down, so we can't just be happy. how fast can our right hand play if our left hand is struggling, so we have to get them both up to speed, but don't worry because that's what we're going to do today, no matter where you are with this, whether it's your weak hand is your left hand or your right hand, no matter how weak it is, it will improve if you work with this, this

method

always works, that's why I say 99, if not 100, you just have to try hard, but I will show you how to do it, the first

step

, fix bad habits, have the intention that both hands look physically the same, so it is somewhat strange to play at the same time and you can feel really strange on a drum in the same way that the drum head reacts , it's like when you were a kid, like you and your friend were jumping together on the trampoline and you both fell at the same time, it's a little weird, you know, it's the same on drums, so do this on a pad. this on a practice deck playing singles with each hand at the same time and just look at your hands and see what the difference is between what my strong hand does and what my weekend does because sometimes it's not just your hand that's the problem weak is weak, it's just that he doesn't grip well at all, like he missed that step, he completely missed it years ago, so you want to make sure you have a good start here, a good base and really grip. the same way with both hands, that way we know where we've leveled the playing field, we know that all we have to do is simply train the muscle memory of the weak hand to do what it's supposed to do, so do this over and over again.

I look at your hands again, I see well, what are the differences? What do I need to change here to make sure I'm getting a good grip? Remember that we want to grip loosely, nice and relaxed, so the club bounces most of the time. What I have noticed. And I've been noticing this especially lately in a lot of my individual students: if you let the fulcrum be actually your middle finger instead of your index finger, that makes it easier to have more bounce because your index finger isn't. Along the way, sometimes the index finger tends to get in the way, so if you grab this way you can keep it here by itself.

Your fulcrum can really be your middle finger guided by your index finger. I've found that tends to be my sweet spot. that tends to work pretty well, so work towards it, you know, focus on these detailed mechanics, whatever bad habits are going on, get rid of them, maybe your strong hand isn't gripping loosely either, so you have to start there, okay, okay. back to square one and you know totally unlearn what you've learned if you're not getting a good bounce you know you're on the right track once you can pull the club down and it bounces up effortlessly once you get both ends doing that, then you're ready to fix your weak hand, so I say all that because you can't really fix a weak hand until it grips properly, so we can talk about strength and all that, to be able to do that.

Step Two: Spend three times as much time working on just your left hand than your right hand, so maybe start practicing with some simple ones. Well, I'm going to spend a lot more time focusing on just the left because the right hand isn't. We don't need as much practice if our goal is to reach the left hand. The reason I say three more times is so that maybe if you spend five minutes with your right hand, then you spend the next 15 with your left, so it's that 20 minute block it doesn't matter, it doesn't have to be exact, it whatever makes sense for you in your practice time and now step three practice singles with your right hand and with your left hand for minutes at a time until they are even. you want to be able to play and they sound totally smooth, exactly the same, also the left hand with a metronome.

That way you really feel that as a left hand it's easy to turn it over in your head once you start and of course practice slow doubles and paradiddles, which can also be used left hand with paradiddles, you're changing back and forth constantly which is cool in a way, the paradiddle is a great litmus test to make sure I'm balanced, am I even? Once you will know? You'll be able to play those paradiddles evenly, but go very slow with them in the meantime. Keep in mind that this wouldn't be possible without that loose, relaxed bounce, so it all starts with that.

Be loose, be relaxed, be able to play this with your weak hand that way you know you can play or that's why we are going to follow this in steps, you must follow these steps, do this in order, otherwise, you will have problems and If you're not going to progress, you're going to get stuck and get frustrated, so start with the grip and then work specifically with the left hand, then work with both hands together, really focusing on doing things. The left hand leads and also balances. now step four, I want to give you this really cool exercise.

This was something my percussion teacher taught me probably in my first percussion lesson in college and it really helped me balance my hands and it's one of those exercises that is a little difficult. It's difficult, well, it's simple, but it's difficult to play it well and that's how so many things are on the drums, right where it's difficult to play them very well, where they sound very good, it's one thing to play them and another to do it. sounds good, so what we're going to do with this exercise is play a measure of doubles followed by a measure of singles played as sixteenth notes as slowly as necessary, but we're going to play the doubles like this, so we're going to start with right right left left right right so we're going to offset them which is going to help us even them out on the one hand if you're trying to even out your doubles this is a great way to do it right left left right right left left right right because remember we're going for the machine gun, even if we don't want to do accents here, after a measure of this we're going to go into singles, so it's going to be like this right left left right right left three and uh four e and uh singles right hand lead singles three e and f four now let's go to go back to the doubles but we are leading with the left hand now one e and a two left left left left now left bleed singles left hand lead singles three e and a four e and right right left left right right so it resets every time I found out that this exercise is the hardest when you play it slow and quiet, just hard to play steady when you play it quiet but quiet and slow playing quiet and slow leads to the control, you have to build the control there and so practice this in silence a little louder slowly fast there isn't really a hard and fast tempo I remember spending a lot of time working at 90, which is a great tempo, but start at 70.

Go really slow and gradually work your way up until you can move forward and actually practice this on a pad helps to expose slightly. inconsistencies that you're playing on a snare, sometimes the sound of the snare and just the volume of it all can hide slight inconsistencies, but do this on your pad like this because you'll notice when things don't line up exactly, when there's a slight skipping or a jump or a sliding consistency the only way to fix that once you get to that tempo is to go really slow again terribly slow but that's how you get this to even out that's what I did while I was playing and so I did a lot of that and practicing a lot of the joystick control exercises where you do paradiddles and the paradiddle variations and you do a lot of these patterns that thoroughly exercise your brain for one thing two-way coordination perfect two-way coordination but also balancing your hands, practicing things like that, practicing that type of exercises and spend as much time as you need to specifically exercise that left hand, so that's it, it's the four steps, but I want to give you one additional step that I want.

To give you a step five because sometimes it's not that simple and sometimes you can do everything I just showed you and you still have problems with your left hand and it still doesn't work right and it's just not comfortable and stuff. they're not joined together and you've been working on it for years and you feel like you're not making progress sometimes that happens like that is when you have a hand that you don't use much and then what I do I would recommend that you do it. I actually made a video about this a few years ago.

I'll put it in the description so you can see it. It's one of my older videos, but we talked more about how to use your weak hand on a day-to-day basis. daily life open doors with it pick up and carry things with it even try brushing your teeth with your weak hand try eating random things like that with your weekend that you wouldn't normally do just to build that brain connection so your brain is more constantly in contact with that hand that normally hasn't done much and in doing so you will become a little more ambidextrous because as a drummer you want to get to a place where you are literally ambidextrous, maybe except that I write with one hand in particular I write with my hand left but I can do a lot of other things with my right hand and a lot of that is thanks to practicing all this on the drums and intentionally using my right hand on a daily basis.

In my life, I even have a habit of grabbing the heaviest drums when going to and from a concert with my right hand, so do things like that because that can't really help. Bonus tip number two: Practice playing with open hands. open hand grooves left hand in the hats right hand moving a good example would actually be the don't stop believing groove that's a great way to play that groove where you just have the left hand here that way the hand right you can move around the kit and if you want to go crazy reverse your kit and there's actually a space where I used to give lessons where I had an upside down drum kit on the other side of the room from the normal drum kit so I could mirror a student and so I would do it Being kind of learning things for the first time together with the student while trying to play it backwards and that also helped me a lot just keeping the rhythm with my left hand and working my left foot on the bass drum so hey yeah I have two kits , if you're lucky enough to have two kits and you can set one up backwards, so by all means stick with it, do it because that's really going to help you a lot, it's going to really screw up your brain, but it's going to help quickly strengthen those brain connections and It will help you a lot, so now that you're getting your hands in great shape and developing that coordination between your hands, keep the ball rolling, develop your coordination even more, work on your feet.

Check out my free eGuide. Know what to practice. The three-part practice routine for people with busy lives. You can do it in 30 minutes a day and this just completes the three main categories of practice of manual technique, coordination, listening and Musicality, there are a lot of great coordination exercises and working on them will also help because if you are working on any type of coordination, that too It will help you with your weak hand, so this was kind of an initial step to work on. just things in your notebook, it's lovely to be able to practice productively in a practice pack because it's so simple, but if you want to go further with this work, your coordination works with the coordination exercises found in that guide that will really stretch you . your weak hand, whatever it may be, to get in better shape, so go check it out It's a really great guide that gives you literally months, maybe even years, of concrete things to practice, so if you feel lost in your practice, you haven't done it. you really know what to work on and you feel like you're stuck, you really don't know where to go next, check it out, I guarantee it will challenge you and put an end to any stagnation and give you a lot of specific things that will help you grow, make sure you check it out in the description below, thanks for watching everyone, if you're new to the channel make sure to subscribe.

Our belief here in the unglamorous drummer is thatyou can achieve whatever you want. to achieve it on the drums when you practice and when you are armed with the right resources, so today I gave you resources, I gave you some specific steps to practice, so you have no excuse not to match the balance of your hands. you have in your hands and you also have that electronic guide that you can consult to give you all kinds of coordination elements, so if you do it, if you take action, you take action. Right now I promise you that if you take action and put these things into practice , you will grow a lot, you will think about yourself in the future, so do it, you can do it, you are more capable of succeeding. on the battery than you thought, thank you all, see you in the next video, don't be glamorous.