This is such a great lesson! As I mentioned in my introduction, I quit learning guitar more than 20 years ago because of I thought my inability to master this chord/technique meant that guitar was just not my instrument. I was self-studying from Mel Bay’s “The Complete Carcassi Guitar Method” which has like one sentence about it: “The Barrer is made by pressing the 1st finger on two or more strings, on the same fret.”
It has a couple more sentences on the difference between the “Great” and the “Small” Barrers, but that’s it! No warning at all that it will be difficult and that it will take time to build the muscles! No tips and tricks to make the process easier. No cheat chords to get you by on songs while these muscles or developing (okay, that’s in the next lesson, but he tells you here that they’re coming). None of that!
Anyway, I arrived at Justin Guitar already with a pretty solid F chord, and yet still learned some helpful things in here, like using your arm to help out and trying to relax everything, so I’m glad I’m going through even the lessons I might otherwise think I can skip!
Anyway, the trick for me was learning Live’s “Lightning Crashes” which is basically a 3 chord song (plus two more in the bridge), where 2 of the 3 chords are barre chords. It took me a few weeks to be able to play it all the way through, and I was really motivated because I’d written a version of the song about Ranked Choice Voting, and I really wanted to post a recording of it before this past year’s election (which I was able to do).
So for anyone struggling with this, just keep at it, and be sure to find a song you really like that uses it. Don’t be like me and quit playing for 20 years!