SEVEN NOTES PER STRING.
THEN IT TURNS AROUND.

You are playing groups of seven on every string. You will know exactly what that means the first time you try it.

With an even grouping, the last note on every string lands on the same stroke every time, so your picking hand can settle into one angle and stay there. It is comfortable. You stop thinking about it.

Seven takes that away. Your picking direction reverses at every single string change. Down on one, up on the next, down again after that, all the way through.

Plenty of players can get the first few bars clean. The difficulty here is not the pattern, it is holding it together across the whole workout while your hand is asking you to stop.

That is the part that transfers. Being able to play something once is not the same as being able to play it in the fourth minute of a song, when your picking hand has already been working.

• Strict alternate picking the entire way through
• No easing into economy picking at the string changes, however tempting
• Stop if anything hurts. Endurance and pain are not the same thing

Do not stack this with three other licks. For the next five days, make this the routine.

Start at 50 and stay there until every string transition is clean and even. Only then move to 120.

And 120 is not an arbitrary target. That is the exact zone where most players' wrist quietly gives out and the forearm takes over the movement. If you can hold this workout together at 120 with a pure wrist motion, you have built something most guitarists never build.