Most guitarists spend years hunting for faster tempos — but speed is often built the wrong way. The real breakthrough comes when you realise that how you move the pick between notes matters far more than the tempo you practise at. This lesson introduces the reflex stroke, one of the most underrated concepts in picking mechanics.
What you’ll get out of this lesson: By focusing on the reflex stroke from the very first note, you’ll train your picking hand to return to the string as quickly as possible at any speed — turning every slow practice session into genuine speed training.
The Problem with Slow Practice
Conventional wisdom says practise slowly to build speed. The trouble is, if you practise slowly without thinking about what your pick hand is doing between strokes, you are simply training yourself to be slow. A downstroke isn’t just moving through the string — it’s moving through the string and getting ready to come back. If that return journey is lazy, your ceiling speed stays low no matter how many hours you log.
What the Reflex Stroke Actually Is
The reflex stroke (also called the choke stroke) is simple in concept: the moment your pick completes a downstroke, you immediately initiate the return upstroke and choke the string. You’re not playing a deliberate note with that upstroke — you’re training the opposite stroke to fire as a reflex, no matter how slow the tempo. Think of it like a spring. The pick hits the string, and the rebound is automatic and instant. You can hear the muted “choke” when it’s working correctly — that’s the signal you’re doing it right.
The Exercise
Today’s exercise is a chromatic pattern that alternates between two notes on one string and four notes on the next. Start on the low strings and work up to the 13th fret, then descend.
The two-then-four pattern is intentional. Real-world scale and lick playing involves uneven distributions — three notes per string, four notes per string — not the perfectly even chromatic runs most players default to. This asymmetry builds the string-changing awareness you need for actual music.
Applying the Reflex Across the Strings
When you reach a string change, your goal is to already be planted on the next string before you need to play it. Your right hand should be thinking ahead, moving toward the next string as soon as the final note on the current string fires. Over time this becomes automatic, and you’ll find that slow practice at 60 BPM genuinely builds the same hand shape you need at 160 BPM — because the reflexive mechanics are identical.
Every time you practise slow, you’re actually never practising slow. You’re always practising your quickest return stroke — which is one of the secrets, one of the things we want to train you to be able to do.
Taking it further: Once the choke reflex feels natural on this chromatic exercise, apply it to any picking exercise or lick you already know — scale runs, arpeggios, even patterns with complex string changes. The concept is universal. You can also experiment with how much pick displacement you’re using: the goal is to keep the movement as small and localised as possible so the return stroke has less ground to cover.
Your homework: Spend roughly 30 minutes on the exercise shown above, starting at a comfortable tempo. For every single note, fire that reflex choke immediately after each downstroke. Don’t chase a faster tempo — chase a faster return. When the choke feels automatic at your current speed, nudge the metronome up a few BPM and repeat.