Yes. In general, large muscles give power and speed, and smaller muscles give precise control and expressiveness.
The best picking motion is one that gives you control, power, speed , stamina, expressiveness, etc. It seems to me that combinations of muscle groups that give you all of those things simultaneously would be better than choosing just one.
I think it’s more about larger motions are easier to use when crossing strings.
The guitarists that use tiny pick-strokes… generally have a system they use to overcome this. Like using lots of legato, or carefully phrasing to minimize 1 or 2 NPS phrases.
Even a wrist mechanic uses the biceps.
In rhe kinesiology of bicep movement we can learn the the bicep has 2 planes of motion.
One, obviously is the flexion and extension of the forearm at the elbow joint.
The second motion is a twisting motion of which forearm.
Try this
Hold your arm, bent at the elbow in a 90 degree fashion. IOW, the elbow joint will be beside your rib cage while the joint is bent holding your forearm in front of you. Similar to reaching out for a doorknob.
Now rotate your wrist so that your palm faces up, and the rotate it back that other way. The whole time watch your bicep muscle…see it flexing?
Even a very small motion like wrist picking is still using the bicep muscle, albeit to a much smaller, much less noticeable extent.
Quick clarification. As a general rule, whenever I talk about motions in our instructional stuff, I refer to the joint, not the limb. In other words, by “wrist motion” I mean “motion at the wrist joint”. These muscles are all located in the forearm and don’t really involve upper arm muscles like the biceps.
When I say “forearm motion”, I mean “motion of the forearm joint”, i.e. “radius moving around the ulna”. As you’re correctly describing, the biceps is indeed a supinator of the forearm.
And when I say “elbow motion”, I mean “motion at the elbow joint”. Which would again involve upper arm muscles.
16th notes at 200bpm tremolo picked? If I can’t get this, but am getting close, should I go back to the drrawing board and try to find another mechanic?
Also, what I meant when I asked if pick strokes should feel like pushing through the strings rather than brushing mostly had to do with pick depth. Pushing through the string gives a deeper depth at resting point than brushing it.
Also, though, it looks like pushing through the string requires a wrist motion akin to hammering a nail, whereas the brushing I’m talking about is more rotational, like using a doorknob. So I guess I should decide which I prefer and which is more effective and then stick with it, right?
That’s really up to you, but your tremolo picking kind of puts an upper speed limit on what you can play. Doing more stuff (moving fingers, crossing strings) just makes it harder. The speed poll on this site a while back indicated that most people could get to 180+, so that’s at least a realistic target.
Yeah, this right here 
edit: I don’t want you to think that I think you should be spending all day working on your tremolo. There’s no reason that you can’t take what you’ve learned and start working on new things. As the new movement cements in your muscle memory you might be able to come back to the tremolo test and discover that you’ve made good gains, without having explicitly worked on it.
I have a friend who does this and by far he is the most relaxed and formidable 19 year old shred beast i have ever seen. He plays many styles and rips through them all day long with no pain tension. Upon studying him he uses DWPS mostly and his thumb and finger for the movement…when he uses UWPS he pushes he thumb down and raises his index knuckle slightly which changed the picking angle. Its amazing to see.
Okay Lars, I can get tremolo picking at 200bpm so no worries! I’m not totally positive if I’m playing 16th notes or 16th note triplets, but it’s fast and comfortable, if not 100% accurate just yet. I’m going to keep working on even note groupings using DWPS ! I find that my pentatonic playing is already faster and smoother! Thanks!
Great stuff! Best of luck!
Is that statement based on your personal experience, what somebody told you, or both? I’m wondering because Batio, for example, uses small movements and those small movements certainly don’t appear to be giving him any trouble when he moves from one string to another. Yngwie is another example of a guy who uses very small movements and can cross strings quickly. If it is hard for somebody to cross strings using small movements do you think maybe it’s because they don’t uses a motion mechanic conducive to crossing strings with small movements like the one Batio uses or like the one Yngwie uses?