I’ve been experiment ion this morning. Try taking one of your solid fast riffs, slow it down in small increments. What I’ve found is medium speed is very awkward
I’ve noticed the same. Next thing i am going to try is, starting fast with an excercise, and go slower. Just to see what happens. 
Shawn Lane had the opposite approach: there’s a youtube video “Shawn Lane Talks About Speed” where he tried to “fracture the continuum” after practicing licks slowly for long periods of time by just playing a speed he couldn’t play at all. He found he could play it but it would be sloppy then over time he’d learn to clean it up. This won’t work for everyone (which he admits in the video) and he also admits he had a freakish nervous system. But if you work endlessly on things slowly and aren’t getting anywhere, maybe try that to see if it works for you.
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I think that it goes beyond just getting to a certain speed- practicing slow helps with warming up. A few years ago, I attended one of MAB’s clinics where I asked him about practice routines and warming up for gigs - how to get to the optimum level of warming up without playing too much before performance. MAB stated that he had diligently learned and practices his picking at slow speeds over the years to the point where he knows that the max speed picking will ‘be there’ if he warmed up to ‘medium’ speeds before a show.
I think that by practicing slow you are honing your technique - slow enough for your brain to analyse and adapt (creating chunks). You can also play for longer when playing slower, thus working on your stamina a bit like athletes training on sprinting - If you build your stamina to the point where you can go for longer distances at a higher than average speed, you can switch gears and take it to the max!
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Thing with mike is his anchoring is very stable, this gives lots of control and minimises a need for readjusting the nervous system. Or warming up.
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110 percent …i am going to start practicing standing up from now on !
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I think there is a bit of a sweet spot for practicing to play fast . Right around 150 bpm 16ths… It’s a speed that I spend a lot of time at… since it’s fast, but not too fast. You can get the feeling of speed, but be playing slow enough to analyze what you are doing. MAB talks about this mid-range as well.
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This video of Martin Miller points to what I have been applying and getting good results with:
Playing to slow to figure out the technique? Absolutely! Playing slow To play fast? Untrue!
Different movements for different situations try to use the same muscles that are involved when one’s running than when walking. You will note that everything will change… in order to improve your pace running, you need to run! Not walk.
As it was said before, sometimes you need to get the feeling of the movement. Speeding up to get the “feeling” of the movement and then working to clean up your guitar playing on high speeds…
Practicing as isolated as possible and in small chunks is by far the best method to get a better technique. I’ve struggled with the Alternate picking motion for years because I’ve never practiced it isolated. I thought, it would develop automatically someday, but it never did. Now I getting an unmeasured amount of evolution in a matter of weeks!!!
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It depends upon the person. There have been too many guitarists who have played slowly for most of their practice sessions and become incredibly fast for it to be “untrue.” I had a guitar teacher back in 1989, I believe it was, named Dallas Perkins. He had studied at G.I.T. in Hollywood and was Paul Gilbert’s roommate. Dallas Perkins has a very unique picking style - different from anybody who has been analyzed by Masters Of Mechanics - in that he uses his thumb and fingers to move the pick and is a great alternate picker. He told me he spent about 90% of his practice sessions for technique playing slowly, sometimes extremely slowly, and about 10% of his practice sessions playing fast and it worked extremely well for him.
You can’t compare playing fast vs. playing slow to walking vs running. It’s apples and oranges. It is possible to play slow using the same technique you use playing fast; it’s a choice. I think most people have a tendency to use a complete different motion when they play fast compared to when they play fast and that’s probably where the walking vs. running comparisons started, but you can’t walk by using the same motion you use when you run - it’s not a choice. You can play slow using the same movement types as when you play fast. That is a choice.
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The reason it’s bad is that if you play something too fast so that you’re making mistakes and you do it over and over again, you’re literally training your body to play fast and sloppy. You’re picking up bad habits and then by repeating it over and over, you’re ingraining those bad habits into your playing. So then you’re going to have to send a lot of time to unlearn those bad habits. it’s counterproductive.
If I were teaching somebody, and I did used to teach guitar, I’d rather teach a beginner who doesn’t have any bad habits yet than teach an intermediate level guy who has a lot of bad habits. I took a guy who was a beginner back in 1997 - all he knew how to do is strum enough chords to play Wonderwall by Oasis. He knew no scales and no lead guitar. All he had was an acoustic guitar. After two years of taking lessons from me every week, this guy who wasn’t even particularly talented; he wasn’t blessed with a lot of God-given musical talent, was accepted into Berklee in 1999. He was easy to teach because he had no bad habits, he did what I told him to do, and he practiced several hours every day.
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