Exercises away from the kit that work for you.

TroyDW

Junior Member
Hey guys and thank you for your contributions - I'm enjoying looking through all the various threads on here.
Since working alot more recently, my practice time has suffered and its becoming harder to find time to increase hand/finger and heel down speed and power.
I'm wondering whether any of you implement exercises away from the drum kit that have genuinely worked for you, where you've noticed an increase in your hand and foot ability.
I've been trying the JoJo Mayer hand clapping exercise and Im really struggling to see improvements, for example. Hopefully you guys can share your experiences with these sort of exercises as it really means alot to me to still get better when i cant devote time every day to improve speed and endurance.
Many thanks!
Gazz
 
This is a pretty simple one that I think works for guitarists as well. It's just "table drumming" but you can do this on your legs if you dont want to annoy someone in the room.

Just tap your four forward fingers in sequence. First from pinky to index for a minute or so, and then in reverse. Switch between right and left hand. Once you get those going in a quick, powerful, even succession (dddrap) then shorten the reps between switches until you are alternating Right hand left to right, left hand left to right, right hand right to left, left hand right to left

Training your fingers to do this without stress or weight in place should give you l a little more coordination when you do have the sticks in your hand.
 
If I'm stuck waiting on something and I'm seated (waiting room, desk, etc.), I like to do quiet coordination exercises. I've improved the timing of tons of things this way, and used it to specifically build up a lot of freedom in my left foot. Here's two ideas:

Run a pattern in one set of limbs, then do Stick Control style stuff with the other set. So maybe singles between your feet on the floor, then doing double and paradiddle variations with your hands on a desk, arm rest, your knees, whatever. Then switch it up: how about doubles between your right hand and right foot, and variations between the left-side limbs. Do as much as you can - in my experience, all the mental focus and neural-pathway-encoding transferred over to the kit easily, and it just took a little working up to play the stuff with some feel.

The other idea is to set up grooves between certain limbs and then play melodies with the remaining one(s). This is like the New Breed, if you've done anything like that. One thing I got a lot out of was playing typical rock, r&b and jazz grooves with my hands and right foot, and then working through as many rhythmic and melodic ideas as I could think of with my left foot. That opened up so many little tricks and options for me - my left foot can be very active now when I need it, and it feels so natural thanks to all that away-from-the-kit practice.

Hope you have some success with it too, totally recommend it!
 
Run a pattern in one set of limbs, then do Stick Control style stuff with the other set. So maybe singles between your feet on the floor, then doing double and paradiddle variations with your hands on a desk, arm rest, your knees, whatever. Then switch it up: how about doubles between your right hand and right foot, and variations between the left-side limbs. Do as much as you can - in my experience, all the mental focus and neural-pathway-encoding transferred over to the kit easily, and it just took a little working up to play the stuff with some feel.

This is a great exercise for independence. Try some inverted doubles with your feet, and then put regular doubles over that with your hands and see if your brain doesn't explode
 
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Thank you all for your contributions, those independance exercises away from the kit sound great I've started them. I was originally hoping to hear about exercises away from the kit that are based on speed and endurance? Such as the Jojo Mayer clap but that doesnt seem to be working for me? Has anyone been using this and seen great results? Or any other speed/endurance hand/finger exercises?
Thanks so much
 
Anything choppy on your thighs or with your feet should work there. Try this:

R R R R R R R R LRLRLRLRLRLRLRLRL L L L L L L L RLRLRLRLRLRLRLRL

Or any exercise/variation you dig, really. In my experience, speed comes a lot more from developing relaxed, precise control than from doing huge amounts of endurance-focused practice. IE; once you can control the specific idea/related-technique effortlessly (more or less), endurance becomes much less of an issue. So keep your mind on relaxation, breathing, solid feel and clean rhythm, even with your fingers on your desk (trying doing that pattern with each R/L pair of fingers, ring fingers can be tough!).
 
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