Upwards pickslanting motion

Hi!
I’ve been trying to learn upws for about a year now but it feels extremely unnatural to me.
As far as I can tell my forearm and pick angle is correct but i’m not so sure about my picking motion.
So my question is:
Is there anything you can tell me about the picking motion of upws, whether it’s just deviation, flexion/extension forearm rotation or maybe some combination?
I also have some problem with palm muting, whenever I do an upstroke the palm releases the pressure from the string so it’s less muted compared to the downstroke. :confused:

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Hey, welcome to the forum, thanks for posting :slight_smile:

First question, have you checked out the Pickslanting Primer?

Most of what we can tell you about picking motions, we’ve tried to include here, so this is always our recommended starting point for folks looking to learn more about technique.

Short answer, yes, there are various motions you can use — wrist, forearm, elbow, blend — and we suggest experimenting with all of 'em. If you find one motion to be more comfortable, go ahead and stick with that!

The internal forum search can sometimes be useful for turning up related discussions on e.g. palm muting, worth a try to see if others have a similar issue. In this case, seems some folks find palm muting trickier with DWPS, others with UWPS, so not a one size fits all answer, but you may find some helpful tips.

If you feel solid on the concepts / how the motions are supposed to work, but still having issues getting it to click, you can also consider a Technique Critique post with some footage of your technique to get more specific feedback!

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