Practicing when you are tired

Playing Technique
#1

What are your opinions/what do you do, when you are tired and still want to practice guitar?

I know this might apply to ALL practice time for some people :grimacing:…but is there anything you do differently?

obviously we are not going to be at our best when tired, so I guess dropping the speeds we practice at might be a good idea, or how about not bothering with technical stuff and just jamming?

the reason I ask is I find there is a definite couple-of-notches difference on the metronome where I start getting sloppy when tired vs in good form, and I wonder if trying to push on in that situation is actually just practicing bad habits.

thoughts?

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#2

Do something that doesn’t require peak physical performance - work on your inversions/fretboard knowledge, learn a new song that isn’t particularly technical.

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#3

I often find myself in that situation because i tend to pack my days.
Today, i am pretty sure i will pick up the guitar after midnight.

Often it works better than expected, maybe because you are not overthinking while practicing when you are already a bit mentally lazy from the day.
However, i always make sure to stop when i realize i am underperforming. You might figure out the mistake and make the effort to correct it when you are fit, but not after a long day.

So long story short: Imo the danger of conditioning bad habits is higher when playing tired, but if you have a good day it can still be beneficial.

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#4

If I’m tired but still feel like I need to practice, I’ll just jam or improvise instead. It’s better than nothing when my focus for actual practice is toast.

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#5

I find that this is worse! My brain is too tired for theory!! Haha!

With a young family, I only have time to practice when I’m tired.

I find its the opposite, when I’m tired I play with less tension and can play for longer and hit the upper end of my speed and stay there for quite a while.

There is a difference though between the short term fatigue and the overall ‘playing with tiredness’. When tired I tend not to care ao much and end up using a bit more of a random practice method - alternating between different licks kind of gives a ‘change is good as a rest’ scenario. As opposed to when I have high energy and get hyper focussed on one or two things and get burned out. I think that our general make up has a lot to do with it - I have always been a night owl and (before kids) could do quite well on 4-5 hours of sleep.

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#6

When I was training we would push to exhaustion prior to sparring.

  1. It helped us to know we could push through
  2. It forced us to focus on good technique because we had no energy to waste

Not sure if it works the same in this case or not
But if you went into it with that mindset it could.

When I’m tired but still feel the need I tend to just run common sequences through scale shapes and at some point I zone out and devolve into noodling. Sometimes though it just ain’t happening so I hang it up and try not to let it bum me out.

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#7

I’m always tired when I practice :joy:

The ironic/sad thing is that I think about guitar a lot during the day, then when guitar time finally comes in the evening my brain is like mashed potatoes and I think “F$%&, now what do I do?” :sweat_smile::sweat_smile::sweat_smile:

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#8

I work three long (12 hour shifts) a week and when I get home I am wrecked. On these days I only play guitar for about 30 minutes and it’s normally just simple rhythm, like playing along with Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana, Soundgarden - stuff like that.

#9

Make a potato waffle and dig right in!!

I know how you feel… but if I do pick up the guitar in those situations, I normally end up playing until 2am and unable to sleep! Haha! And cycle repeats!

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