Weekly Workout

Jane Miller seated teaching a weekly workout lesson on her acoustic guitar, photographed in a studio with a microphone in front and a grand piano in the background.

The Weekly Workout is a series of monthly exercises made up of interesting technical workouts that will get your fretting- and picking-hand fingers working in different ways, and offer musical studies that will help you visualize and explore the fingerboard.

Collections of Weekly Workouts organized by topic and technique are available to download in the Acoustic Guitar store for a year's worth of guitar lesson workouts that promise to engage your fingers as well as your mind.

In every lesson available here, you’ll get a different guitar exercise to work on for each week of the month, as well as a few extra variations and extended practice ideas.

Mother Maybelle Carter album cover for "Pickin and Singin"

Improve Your Flatpicking Technique with These Mother Maybelle Carter-Inspired Exercises

In this guitar lesson, these arrangements of two songs by Mother Maybelle Carter will help develop your technique and understanding of the flatpicking idiom.

Cathy Fink playing acoustic guitar

Learn to Play Rock-Solid Rhythm Guitar

In this guitar lesson you will focus on tightening up your timing on rhythm guitar using a variety of different strumming rhythms.

ron jackson guitar lesson weekly workout

How to Strengthen Your Picking Skills Through Efficient Patterns

In this guitar lesson you'll learn economy picking, which includes alternate and sweep picking styles, as well as legato techniques for your fretting fingers.

black and white photograph of a one-man band

How to Craft Dynamic Song Arrangements on Acoustic Guitar

Even if you’re accompanying a song with one guitar, you can create the same kind of journey on your instrument that a full band arrangement would.

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Sean McGowan holding acoustic guitar in his home studio

Try These Fun Guitar Exercises to Build Coordination Between Your Fretting and Picking Hands

This acoustic guitar lesson takes a deep dive into building independence among the fingers of both the fretting and picking hands.

fingerstyle improv on guitar

4 Ways to Improve Your Fingerstyle Guitar Improvisation

This Weekly Workout will help you develop your frame of mind and confidence in solo fingerstyle improvisation on guitar via Tárrega's “Etude in E minor.”

Cathy Fink holding acoustic guitar American Roots Licks for Warming Up or Composing

Weekly Workout: Try These American Roots Licks for Warming Up or Composing on Guitar

Grammy Award-winning roots musician Cathy Fink teaches licks drawn from folk, country, and bluegrass, perfect for warming up or songwriting on guitar.

ron jackson seated with a guitar for guitar lesson on harmonic and melodic minor scales

Weekly Workout: Building Colorful Chords from the Harmonic and Melodic Minor Scales

In this advanced guitar lesson, meet the melodic and harmonic minor scales and explore the harmonies that can be generated from them.

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ron jackson posing with his acoustic guitar pointed headstock first towards the camera

Weekly Workout: Add Jazzy Walking Bass Lines to Your Accompaniments

Learn how to play walking bass lines with chords—a cool approach to have up your sleeve, no matter what style you play.

Jeff Gunn close up demonstrating how to play harmonics on acoustic guitar neck

Weekly Workout: How to Use Harmonics to Add Texture to Your Playing

Learn how each type of harmonic—natural, harp, percussive, and pinch—is produced and how it can be used to add textural interest to your guitar playing.