“Speed” is not generally a good gauge of improvement. If you can’t move your hands at the target tempo to start with, then that’s a motion efficiency problem and it needs to be overcome immediately. This is why we start with the table tapping tests in the Primer.
To begin with, you’re looking for a tremolo motion that approaches the speed of your table tap tests. You need to find that first, because repeating inefficient motions doesn’t generally make them any faster — unless you subconsciously or accidentally switch to a more efficient motion at some point during that repetition. Most of the time, your fast/efficient motion will be what we call a “single escape” motion, either USX or DSX. Once you have that, you can move on to hand sync and phrases.
Phrases that use single escape joint motions have an almost flat speed/accuracy curve. For basic pure alternate type lines, like scale patterns, they can be played just about as fast as you can go with no substantial increase in difficulty. You can measure your “improvement” by accuracy, but even then, on simple patterns like the single-string Yngwie six-note phrase, you’re not really looking for a slow grinding increase in your accuracy over time. The six-note fragment can be pretty accurate from the start. It’s just about learning to do it on command completely automatically, and eventually, across different fretboard shapes and strings.
