Become the Best Drummer You Can Be in 2025: 3 Practise Tips to Boost Your Progress.
I started playing drums at 15 and, by 17, was in bands, studying music, and progressing quickly. But when I started university at 18, I realized I was behind. Many of my peers had been playing for over a decade, and I knew I had to work harder to catch up.
Over the next three years, I poured my energy into practice—often staying in while others went out—developing systems to maximize my time and progress. From trial and error, I discovered three essential practice habits that still guide me nearly a decade later, ensuring consistent growth every year.
Tip 1: The Two-Day Rule
Consistency is king when it comes to developing any skill, and drumming is no exception. But let’s be honest: life gets busy, and there will be days when you simply can’t make time for practice. This is where the Two-Day Rule becomes a game-changer.
What Is the Two-Day Rule?
The Two-Day Rule is simple: never let more than two days go by without practising. Missing one day is fine—sometimes unavoidable—but skipping two days in a row sets a pattern of inconsistency. This rule helps you build a long-term habit of practice, even when motivation dips.
Why It Works
This method works because it prioritises momentum over perfection. By ensuring you never take extended breaks, you’ll keep your muscle memory sharp and maintain your progress. Even brief practice sessions—10 to 15 minutes—can make a huge difference.
The compound interest that takes place from this level of consistency is immense. Imagine how good we’d be if we practised an average 30-60 minutes everyday 300/365 days a year, for 10 years. Pretty good I reckon.
Example: A Busy Week in Action
Imagine practise slammed with work and other commitments. On Monday, you practice for 30 minutes. Tuesday gets hectic, and you skip practice. Wednesday rolls around, and the Two-Day Rule reminds you to squeeze in 15 minutes of paradiddle exercises.
That quick session keeps your streak alive and prevents skills from slipping. It also reinforces that habit of practising as something you always do, not to mention you solidify the identity of being “the guy who practices a lot” in your mind.
Here’s a video on the Two Day Rule. WATCH.
Pro Tip: Practice Micro-Sessions
Decide ahead of starting the Two Day Rule what your minimum amount of practice time per day is. For me, it’s 10 minutes. I know that’s not a lot but when I get very busy, it feels good to know I’m at least maintaining my skill level. This could be considered as your practice pad time.
Tip 2: Keep a Practise Tracker (Not a Diary)
One of the biggest barriers to progress is losing track of what you’ve practised and how far you’ve come. A practice tracker helps you stay organised and accountable, ensuring every session builds on the last.
What’s the Difference Between a Tracker and a Diary?
A tracker is simply a log of the exercises you do and the tempos you do them at. See picture below.
Some people will try to tell you to write out your thoughts in a diary but I’ll be honest, I don’t have time for that, and I doubt you do either.
How to Set Up Your Tracker
There’s two ways to do this and it depends on your preference:
Analog:
Buy a gridded maths book, like the ones you had at school, and use the squares to be tickboxes for your progress. Write the skill you’re developing and the date at the top (I like to see how long it takes me to complete a topic, that way I can more accurately predict how long the next development will take). Then write out your exercises and draw in the tickboxes. Make sure to keep it by your kit or wherever you practise.
I also have a system that keeps me in check and stops me from pushing myself too quickly:
I can only mark a tickbox once a practice session, which means I have to practice something a minimum of 3 times before I can move on.
I often stop myself on the first diagonal line as sometimes practising something 3 times just isn’t enough. Be honest with yourself and only move up a tempo or difficulty when you feel super comfortable.
Why I Like It?
Something feels very satisfying about crossing off a whole page. Seeing the time you started, and knowing the hours it took, to me it feels much more rewarding to write it out manually. Maybe I’m more old school than I think.
Plus, I have had the same book for about 7 years. That’s a lot less hassle than updating the digital version constantly. Speaking of…
Digital:
I have tried this before but it just felt cumbersome to me.
Essentially you do the exact same thing but you use Google Sheets, or Excel, whatever you have, and make a spreadsheet in the same fashion. Write out your exercises, and the tempos/goals, and format it so you can tick off your progress as you go.
This might work better for you if you use your laptop a lot, or are moving around often and don’t always want to take a book with you.
Pros and Cons of Practice Tracker Styles
Analog Tracker
Pros:
Tangible and satisfying: Physically ticking off progress is highly rewarding.
Minimal distractions: No notifications or apps pulling your attention away.
Simple setup: A notebook and pen are all you need.
Longevity: A single notebook can last years and is easily stored.
Cons:
Limited portability: Carrying a physical book might not always be convenient.
No automatic updates: Requires manual adjustments or rewrites if you need to reorganize.
No backups: If lost, all records are gone.
Digital Tracker
Pros:
Accessible anywhere: Easily updated on your phone, tablet, or computer.
Customizable: Templates, automatic calculations, and formatting make it adaptable.
Easily shareable: Great for collaborating with teachers or peers.
Backup options: Data is safe if stored in the cloud.
Cons:
Potential distractions: Apps and notifications can break focus.
Setup can be tedious: Requires initial time investment to create and format.
Lacks tactile satisfaction: No physical ticking or crossing off, which some find motivating.
Why this works:
Keeping track of your practise is essential to progress on the kit. Sure, you can have a “felt sense” of if you’ve gotten better, but that is largely subjective.
Three things happen when you track your progress:
It takes the guesswork out of practise making it easier to get started. No deciding what exercise or tempo you’re going to practise today, it’s already decided by past you. I’ve found removing this friction makes it much easier to sit down and actually crack on.
You can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s like when sprinters get to the last lap and then they bomb it to the finish line. When you can see how far you have to go, you have an increased sense of motivation, and your perceived effort is reduced as it feels less daunting and helps you focus in on your objective.
You can see how far you’ve come and with that comes a sense of pride that what you are doing or practising is actually leading somewhere.
Tip 3: Choose 2–3 Skills to Practise Over the Entire Year
In drumming, it’s tempting to practise every new technique, groove, or style you come across. But spreading yourself too thin leads to mediocre results. Instead, commit to mastering two or three core skills over the course of 2025.
Why This Matters:
Most of us all know how to play single strokes but compare your single strokes now to when you first started. They’re wildly different! Why? Years of practice no doubt.
Now take the new rudiment you’ve been wanting to learn and imagine you spend the whole year learning it, developing it, incorporating it into your grooves and fills, making polyrhythms combining it with other rudiments etc. You won’t just know how to play a rudiment, you will have a whole new vocabulary, and styles of playing and you will have developed something that is unique to you!
How many drummers have spent a whole year learning a single ratamacue? Not many I expect, but the ones that have almost certainly have some amazing grooves and fills up their sleeve whenever the time comes.
Now, I would say if you are choosing a rudiment for practice, pick a group of rudiments, like all the double stroke rolls, or all the paradiddles (E.g. single, double, triple, paradiddle-diddle).
If you want ideas on how to develop your Paradiddle, check out my blog post How To Build Speed and Precision with Paradiddles.
When I’m not teaching, you can find me drumming for Winter Gardens and Coco & The Lost.
Follow my journey on Instagram.
How To Choose Your Focus Areas
While this is completely up to you, I tend to follow a rough template to cover most bases:
Technique: Think of Moeller Technique, Push/Pull, Finger Control, Heel/Toe etc. This is focused on the mechanics of how we play, rather than what we play.
Musicality: This usually involves one kind of genre study. E.g. Jazz, Latin, Reggae. So much can be learned from all styles of music and nothing should be discounted. For example, so many metal grooves come from Afro-Cuban rhythms. Most drummers can be the “Rock Guy”, but not many can be the “Rock Guy who Musically incorporates the Mozambique and Tumbao”. Maybe that’s what makes you a unique player.
Independence and Coordination: This is where I put things like fills and grooves, I just try to make them harder than the base form. E.g. a single stroke fill but with a foot ostinato underneath, or a groove with four-way independence. This is where we develop our flair, chops and the “yo he’s sick” factor.
This is just a guideline that most of my life I have followed. Strangely enough, at the time of writing this I’m not following it. Here is my focus for 2025.
My Practise Areas for 2025:
Traditional Grip (Typically Pad Practice)
Double Kick (Specifically Heel/Toe)
Afro-Cuban & Latin Rhythms
I’m covering a lot in this. I have speed and control coming from the traditional grip study, foot speed and genre specificity with the double kick and the Afro-Cuban & Latin study has musicality, four-way independence, orchestration speed and a subjective development of “feel”.
I sometimes let my practise evolve, which is entirely down to your discretion. If you really think you don’t need to focus on triplet fills anymore, then change your focus area. Just make sure that you have completed everything in your tracker before you move on.
Pro Tip: Always Have One Pad-Focused Topic
Not only because it’s good for our technique, speed, and control, but also because if you are super busy and think you might fail the Two Day Rule, it’s very easy to smash out 10 minutes of pad practise to maintain the habit and skills.
Combining the Tips: Your 2025 Drumming Plan
These three tips—the Two-Day Rule, a practise tracker, and focused skill development—are most powerful when used together. Here’s how to integrate them into a cohesive plan:
Set Your Yearly Goals: Choose your 2–3 focus areas.
Create Your Tracker: Analog or digital, just make sure you have access to it when you practice.
Apply the Two-Day Rule: Practice consistently, even during busy weeks.
By sticking to this system, you’ll build momentum and see measurable progress throughout the year.
Conclusion: Make 2025 Your Year of Growth
Becoming the best drummer you can be in 2025 isn’t about practising longer—it’s about practising smarter. By following the Two-Day Rule, keeping a detailed practice tracker, and narrowing your focus to a few key skills, you’ll set yourself up for success.
Whether you're just starting out or refining your craft, these tips will help you stay consistent, organized, and focused. Combine them, and by the end of 2025, you’ll be amazed at how far you’ve come. The key is simple: keep showing up, one practice session at a time.
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Until tomorrow,