Fix your Fret Hand Dexterity Instantly
In one of my first lessons with my first guitar teacher, while I was struggling through some chord changes, he stopped me and said, "Ah, you've got a case of 80's shred hand."
I just looked at him blankly. What's 80's shred hand?
He explained it like this: picture every 80's music video where the guitarist's hand is flying all over the neck, fingers everywhere, barely staying on the fretboard. Looks cool. Terrible for actually playing harder material.
Hi, my name is Troy. I've helped thousands of guitarists over the past 13 years as a teacher, and 80's shred hand is one of the most common (and most fixable) habits I see holding people back.
The simple fix
Tilt your hand so your knuckles are parallel with the bottom of the guitar neck. That's it. Easy enough, right?
Actually making that change stick is the harder part, since you've probably been playing with that posture for a while, and now you have to consciously override it. Most bad habits on guitar aren't hard to understand… They're hard to remember.
It comes down to posture
Not "sit up straight for no reason" posture. Guitar posture is about keeping your wrists straight and your fingers an equal distance from the strings, without straining your body to get there.
Most people go wrong by forcing their body into an uncomfortable position and then deciding proper posture just isn't for them. Try this instead: get your hand comfortably on the neck with your fingers equal distance from the strings, then move your guitar, not your body, until your wrists are straight too. If you're not comfortable, you won't be able to practice for very long anyway.
Two exercises that actually fix it
In the full video, I walk through the two exercises that fixed this for me:
An isolation drill that builds independent finger control without letting your hand move
A harder drill that builds on that. the one that makes most people say "...absolutely not" the first time they see it, with six different finger-pair combinations to work through
It took me three weeks of practicing the second exercise daily to fix most of the problem, and another nine months before I stopped having to think about it. There's a good chance one of the six combinations gives you real trouble. That's actually good news, because now you know exactly what to fix.