It Still Feels Really Hard": Why Your Brain Lags Behind Your Hands

Here's a conversation I have at least once a week in my Bristol drum lessons:

Me: "That sounded great! Really clean."

Student: looking frustrated "But it feels so hard. Like, I'm having to think about every single note. It doesn't feel natural at all."

Me: "That's completely normal. You're in Stage 2."

Student: "What?"

Let me explain something that confuses almost every drummer I teach: your body can execute a skill accurately long before your brain stops working overtime to control it.

If you've ever played something that sounded perfect but felt exhausting, or wondered why something that "should" be easy still requires intense concentration, this is for you.

The Disconnect Students Feel

This is one of the most frustrating experiences in learning drums—and I see it constantly:

A student plays through a pattern. No mistakes. Timing is solid. Technique looks good. By every objective measure, they've got it.

But they finish and say: "That was so difficult. I don't know why I'm still struggling with this."

From my perspective as the teacher, they're not struggling. They just played it correctly.

From their perspective, every note required intense mental effort. It felt like pushing a boulder uphill.

Who's right?

Both of you. And understanding why this happens is crucial to not getting discouraged during the learning process.

The Three Stages of Skill Acquisition

Back in 1967, psychologists Paul Fitts and Michael Posner identified three distinct stages that everyone goes through when learning a motor skill. This framework has become one of the most influential models in psychology, and it explains exactly what you're experiencing.

Stage 1: Cognitive Stage (Early Learning)

What it is:

• You're figuring out what to do. Every movement requires conscious thought. You're using explicit rules ("right hand hits the hi-hat, left hand hits the snare..."). Performance is slow, clunky, inconsistent, and full of errors.

What it feels like:

• "I have no idea what I'm doing. This is overwhelming."

What it sounds like:

• Rough. Lots of mistakes. Nothing flows yet.

Stage 2: Associative Stage (Middle Learning) ← This is where you are

What it is:

• You can execute the skill accurately now. Movements are more consistent. Errors are less frequent. But performance still requires significant mental effort and conscious attention to execute correctly.

What it feels like:

• "I can do it, but it's exhausting. Every note requires concentration. It feels really hard even though it's working."

What it sounds like:

• Good! Maybe even great. Accurate, consistent, musical.

The disconnect: It sounds much better than it feels.

Stage 3: Autonomous Stage (Automaticity)

What it is:

• The skill has become automatic. Performance requires minimal conscious attention. You can do it while thinking about other things. Movements are fast, fluent, and effortless.

What it feels like:

• "I don't even have to think about it. My hands just know what to do."

What it sounds like:

• The same as Stage 2—but now it feels as easy as it looks.

Why Accuracy Doesn't Mean It Should Feel Easy Yet

Here's the crucial insight that most students don't understand:

Accuracy is not the same as fluency.

1. Accuracy = your body executing the movements correctly
2. Fluency = your body executing the movements automatically, without conscious control

You can have accuracy without fluency. That's Stage 2.

And that's why something can sound perfect but still feel incredibly difficult.

What the Research Shows

Neuroscientist Russell Poldrack and his colleagues studied what happens in the brain as people develop motor skills. They used brain imaging to watch what happens as learners move from early learning to automaticity.

Here's what they found:

During Stage 2 (accurate but effortful):

• The lateral prefrontal cortex (cognitive control regions) is highly active
• Working memory is heavily engaged
• Executive functions are managing every aspect of the task
• The brain is working hard

During Stage 3 (automatic and fluent):

• Prefrontal cortex activation decreases significantly
• Working memory demands drop
• The skill runs without constant supervision
• The brain can focus on other things

Poldrack defines automaticity like this: "Automaticity has been achieved when performance of a primary task is minimally affected by other ongoing tasks."

In other words, you've truly automated a skill when you can do it whilst thinking about something else—or whilst doing another task simultaneously.

Until then? Your brain is working overtime, even if your hands are doing everything correctly.

"Your Body Can Do It—Your Brain Just Hasn't Caught Up Yet"

This is how I explain it to students in lessons:

Your hands have learned the movements. That's why it sounds good when you play. But your brain hasn't automated those movements yet. That's why it still feels hard.

Think of it like learning to drive:

Stage 1: You're consciously thinking "press the clutch, shift the gear, release the clutch, press the accelerator." Every action requires deliberate thought. You make lots of mistakes.

Stage 2: You can shift gears correctly now, but you're still consciously thinking through each step. It works, but it requires focus. You can't have a conversation whilst changing gears—it's too demanding.

Stage 3: Shifting gears happens automatically. You don't think about it at all. You can drive whilst talking, listening to music, thinking about what you're cooking for dinner.

Same thing happens with drumming.

Right now, you're in Stage 2. You can execute the pattern, but your brain is still manually controlling every movement. That requires a lot of cognitive resources—which is why it feels exhausting.

This is normal. This is how learning works.

The Only Way Forward: Practice

Here's the part students don't always want to hear, but it's backed by decades of research:

The only way to move from accurate-but-effortful to accurate-and-fluent is through continued practice.

There's no shortcut. No hack. No technique that bypasses the need for repetition.

Automaticity develops through repeated execution of the skill. Your brain needs volume—lots of correct repetitions—to shift the skill from "controlled processing" (effortful, conscious) to "automatic processing" (effortless, unconscious).

Fitts and Posner's research, and countless studies since, all point to the same conclusion: the path from Stage 2 to Stage 3 is paved with practice.

How Much Practice?

It varies wildly depending on the complexity of the skill, your existing abilities, and how you practise. But generally:

• Simple patterns might feel automatic after a few focused sessions
• Moderately complex patterns might take weeks of regular practice
• Highly complex patterns might take months

The good news? You're already in Stage 2. You've achieved accuracy. Now it's just a matter of accumulating enough repetitions for your brain to automate the movements.

How to Make This Stage Less Frustrating

Knowing you're in Stage 2 doesn't make it less effortful, but it can make it less frustrating. Here are some strategies:

1. Validate the Experience

Stop beating yourself up for finding something difficult that sounds good.

The difficulty is real. The cognitive load is real. It's supposed to feel hard right now. That's not a sign of failure—it's a sign you're in the middle of the learning process.

2. Track Progress in Effort, Not Just Accuracy

Instead of asking "Can I play this correctly?", ask "How hard does this feel?"

If last week it felt like a 9/10 difficulty and this week it feels like a 7/10, that's progress—even if it still sounds the same to an outside listener.

Your subjective experience of effort is decreasing. That's the brain moving toward automaticity.

3. Use Spaced Practice*

Research shows that distributed practice (shorter sessions over more days) is more effective than massed practice (long, intense sessions) for developing automaticity.

1. Better: 15 minutes per day for 7 days
2. Worse: 2 hours in one session

Your brain consolidates learning between sessions. Give it time to work.*

*Just remember that this only counts IF you're not distracted!

4. Reduce Cognitive Load Temporarily

If you're overwhelmed, simplify one element:

• Slow the tempo (reduces time pressure, which reduces cognitive load)
• Remove dynamics (focus only on notes and timing)
• Play only hands, or only feet (reduces coordination demands)

Once one element feels more automatic, reintroduce complexity.

5. Accept That Some Things Just Take Time

There's a stage of learning where the only advice is: "Keep going."

You're doing everything right. You're practising correctly. You're making progress. But your brain needs more time and more repetitions to automate the skill.

That's not a failure. That's biology.

For Parents: What This Looks Like

If your child says "this is really hard" but you can hear them playing it correctly, they're not being dramatic or lazy.

They're accurately reporting their subjective experience. Their brain is working hard even though their hands are executing correctly.

Don't say: "But you just played it perfectly! It can't be that hard."

Do say: "I can hear that it's sounding really good. Your brain just hasn't made it automatic yet. That takes time, but you're definitely making progress."

Validate the effort. Acknowledge the progress. Trust the process.

For Students: You're Not Alone

Every single drummer—from complete beginners to world-class professionals—has experienced this disconnect.

There's a stage in learning every new skill where you can do it, but it doesn't feel natural yet. Where the gap between "I can execute this" and "this feels easy" seems impossibly wide.

That gap closes with practice. Not with more thinking. Not with different techniques. With repetition.

Your brain needs time to shift the skill from conscious control to automatic execution. You can't force it. You can only keep practising and trust that your brain is doing the work in the background.

The Bottom Line

If you can play something accurately but it still feels exhausting, you're not struggling. You're in Stage 2 of skill acquisition—the associative stage.

Stage 2 characteristics:

• Accurate performance ✓
• Still requires high cognitive load ✓
• Feels much harder than it looks ✓
• Not yet automatic ✗

The path forward: Continued practice. Repetition. Time.

Your body has learned the movements. Your brain just hasn't automated them yet. That's a temporary state, not a permanent one.

The feeling of difficulty will fade. The sense of effort will decrease. The movements will become fluent and automatic.

But only if you keep going.

So when something sounds good but feels hard, don't interpret that as failure. Interpret it as: "I'm in Stage 2. My brain is working hard because it hasn't automated this yet. I need more practice, and that's completely normal."

Because it is.

If you're in Bristol and looking for drum lessons that explain the psychology of learning, not just the mechanics of playing, get in touch. I work with students who want to understand why practice works, not just what to practise.

Research References:

• Fitts, P. M., & Posner, M. I. (1967). Human Performance. Brooks/Cole. [The foundational three-stage model of skill acquisition]

• Poldrack, R. A., et al. (2005). The neural correlates of motor skill automaticity. Journal of Neuroscience, 25 (22), 5356-5364. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15930384/

• Logan, G. D. (1988). Toward an instance theory of automatisation. Psychological Review, 95 (4), 492-527.
• Schneider, W., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing. Psychological Review, 84 (1), 1-66.