The Rock House Method Hands of Steel

2010 | DVD5 | NTSC 4:3 (720x480) VBR | MPEG, ~7079 kbps | 60 mins | English / Spanish: AC3, 192 kb/s (2 ch) | 2.65 GB
This instructional DVD from Rock House Method is subtitled X-Treme Strength & Technique Training that should give you some indication about the content of this video. The instructor is John McCarthy who is one of the founders of Rock House Method and has developed a set of 3 exercise routines designed to build picking and left hand fingering speed and accuracy as well as finger strength and dexterity.

Routine 1
Begins with some simple alternate picking exercises and hammer-on and pull-off examples and move on to some more difficult exercises that help to isolate all of your left hand fingers and fingering combinations. The routine finishes with an alternate picked Minor Pentatonic pattern which is then transposed across the 5 Pentatonic patterns which is also a useful pentatonic scale memorising exercise.

Routine 2
Expands on the first starting with more advanced picking patterns and scale exercises. John also has a couple of tricky exercises named The Killer and Finger Crusher the first is a chromatic pattern to get your fingers used to crossing strings using an awkward fingering pattern which helps build strength and coordination and the Finger Crusher moves a pentatonic pattern 2 strings at a time up and down the neck. There are also exercises that just isolate your 3rd and 4th left hand fingers which is something most guitarists need to do from time to time.

Routine 3
Takes the first 2 lessons a step further with advanced legato runs, incorporating open strings into patterns and string skipping pentatonic licks. There is also a monster exercise called simply the Classical Exercise which brings together all of the exercises into something more musical.