Why You Should Anchor When Guitar Coaches Tell You Not To

“Don’t anchor” has to be some of the most questionable advice I’ve ever heard in all of guitar coaching.

If you already do it, you don’t need to unlearn it.  You don’t need to feel silly for doing it.  In fact, anchoring can be the secret to getting you out of your plateau.

I get so confused just thinking about this.  Instead of anchoring your picking hand to the guitar, we are told to keep a floating picking hand.  People who champion this method claim that keeping some sort of contact between the picking hand and the guitar is somehow an interference. Still, they hardly ever give a valid reason why this is the case.

And to add insult to injury, I find that this advice makes it more difficult for guitarists to play clean, fast, and comfortably. Players who work to keep a rigid floating picking hand are more likely to remain stuck.  You risk unwanted string noise and wasting years trying to perfect a technique that actually leaves you at a disadvantage–especially if you’re already prone to anchoring to begin with, which many players are.

My assignment today is to illustrate why keeping a floating picking hand creates the very problems it attempts to solve.  I’ll also make a case for why anchoring reigns supreme, and show you how you can use this technique to be an adaptable shred guitarist.