I don’t know if it’s common but it surely happened to me. My advice is to try to ģet to it by feeling, on muted strings along with a song that you like. Try to relax down into the music first and go along with the four downstrums on the beat and when those feel relaxed (take the time you need) just try and see what happens. Don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t happen, it will. Also playing air guitar along with music helped me to get into the feeling of it, It took sometime. Keep on trying 
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Im getting to be fairly good at strumming the DDUUD pattern with my arm/hand, but my foot gets bonkers when i miss the 3rd down…it doesn’t know when to drop.
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Playing along to a metronome click or drum beat might help. Don’t be afraid to go slow at first, like 40 - 60 BPM.
Or write out the strumming pattern over the count - large text on a full sheet of paper seems to help - and play very slowly to a click until it starts to flow.
For me, trying to tap my foot seems to get in the way when learning something new. I focus on getting a good solid rhythm in my strumming hand, and then the foot tapping just seems to emerge naturally.
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I would just recording yourself doing the strum pattern and then play it back and try to tap your foot to it. Slow it down, if necessary.
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Wow, at first I thought this isn’t too hard, I didn’t realize how much quicker I played through that dropped 3rd beat and how it affected the timing until I turned on the metronome. I guess the brain just wants to get back to making noise! 
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Jason @Jay_R
First of all welcome to the community 
I think your early experiences with OF mirrors mine in that the time between the two up strums was far too quick it was almost as if it was meant to be the down strum. Fortunately with practice I think I have overcome it, like at lot of things on the guitar practice is the key.
Michael
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Well, I’ve been at it for over a week now, and I’ll admit I almost stalled right here too! I feel like I’m starting to get it, but my mechanics are still wrong, and like @MAT1953 said, that means my timing has to be wrong, too. Instead of maintaining a smooth strumming motion, right now I’m just holding my arm down near the low E-string, waiting briefly before I pick the up-strum. I’m thinking in my head 1, 2 and… and 4! But I’m sure if I work up the courage to try it with a metronome again, it’s going to sound bad. But at least I have a better idea of what it’s supposed to sound like! Somebody on another forum suggested I go back and try to maintain a basic 1-2-3-4 strumming pattern at a lower tempo, 60-70bpm, so I think that’s what I’m going to do at the start of every practice session for a while.
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Ian @istewart
If I am reading you correctly you are not moving you strumming hand up and down all the time, which I think is a bad habit to get into. You will in turn learn not strum on the down of 3.
If you have been doing OF for only a week it is early days, it will come with practice. I did find I was better at more than 60 to 70 bpm but that might be a personal thing.
Michael
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This strumming pattern is genuinely kicking my butt!
Strumming sounds like a pretty easy concept, move your arm to help glide the plectrum over strings to create sound, but the rhythm and especially doing it while changing chords is super difficult.
I do think there are aspects of strumming that I have rushed, so I’ll have to go back and revisit it from the first strumming video. I don’t want strumming to be something I dread. Fingers crossed it won’t be as tricky as I think it will be!
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I’m having a lot of difficulty if trying to change chords with “The Strumming Pattern” I have the accompanying app on my iPad and if there are two chords on the same bar do I just keep going with the strumming pattern regardless of where the chord change is? Or would it be like this with the changes. Down on E /down/change/ up on A /up /Down and back to E? As I find myself really struggling with getting the rhythm of the pattern down with two changes on the same bar.
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Your strumming hand is on autopilot, ideally. You shouldn’t be putting any focus onto it, so you only have to think about making your chord change in time. I had trouble with chord changes mid-strum as well, I always fumble a bit when I’m learning a new song (am still very beginner), but doing the strumming exercise to a metronome and also just keeping it up while chatting / watching videos etc will help you get it on autopilot so that when you’re making chord changes anywhere in a song you can forget about the strumming arm entirely because it’ll just keep doing its thing.
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Hi @jackct923, welcome to the forum! If it’s any consolation: it is very normal to struggle with this, and a lot of others have asked this question before you.
Old faithful is a great strumming pattern for loads of songs, but not so much for songs with a chord change in the middle of a bar. It is often recommended here by one of the Justin Guitar teachers, @Richard_close2u, to do a downstrum on 3, just in the bar with the change. You could just do 4 downstrums in that bar. It’s less complicated than it sounds.
But since you’re still very early in your journey, you could also use another strumming pattern for the whole of songs with 2 changes in a bar. It’s not mandatory to add old faithful to the song exercise. But it is of course a good exercise 
Keep up the good work!
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@jackct923 Hello and welcome to JustinGuitar and the Community.
The short answer is no. Revert to four all down strums or a strum pattern in which the four beats of 1, 2, 3, 4 are all played.
See this topic for even more: Help - 2 chords in a bar & strumming Old Faithful alone or with the Songs App (moderator combined topic)
Cheers
Richard 
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Thanks everyone for being so welcoming to the group!
I never thought of switching to all downstrums in the bar with 2 chords and then moving back to old faithful on a bar with one chord. That really helps. I kept starting the strumming pattern over every time I change the chord on those bars.
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I feel like I’ve kinda hit a wall with that lesson, or at least its equivalent in the app. I can handle playing this pattern on its own (not perfectly, but i manage to get it right i’d say 70% of the time when i practice), and while my chord changes aren’t perfect, they’re also at what i’d call a decent to close to decent level. And then I try to combine the two, for example for playing “The Old Faithful” by The Musopians (on the app, which is what I use for learning) and… I completely fail. I feel like i absolutely can’t handle changing between two chords while also strumming, except for the most basic change like E to Em. (and vice versa) Every other chord change feels like it’s impossible, if i try to focus on my left hand i’ll stop strumming or at best completely stop following the rhythm, and if i try to focus on my right hand i’ll be unable to actually change the chord. Add to that also trying to tap my foot and count and it’s way too much for my brain to process. (for what’s it’s worth, I struggle to multitask overall, which probably doesn’t help) What’s the best route to go to overcome that wall? Are there any exercises/lessons to follow? I haven’t looked at the lessons past that one, i’m trying to handle playing the old faithful first, so I apologize if the answer to my question is in one of the future module and i’m just supposed to know how to play the pattern and change chords independently for now, and mixing those up is something you learn later on.
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Don’t beat yourself up for this - like others in the forum, I struggled with the exact same thing. It took time and focussed practice, and breaking things down into chunks before assembling them together, e.g. (1) Work for 3-5 mins on this pattern with muted strings (2) Work on it with one chord alone (3) add a chord you are comfortable changing with quickly, i.e. the Perfect Fast Chords lesson.
For example, at this stage in the course, I found it easier to change between A and D, then E and D or A and E. I could just about do this pattern while changing between A and D, but the rest were hit/miss, and the G/C/D changes were a big reach. It takes time but it comes together
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Hi Hugo @Yamigishi, welcome to the community! In addition to the good advice from Ashu @Beatup6String, I’d add the following: First, slow down. Way down. Until you can play the pattern using muted strings with no mistakes, at least for a minute or two. Use a metronome, and when you get proficient at one tempo, and 5 bpm and practice until you’re proficient (it won’t take long!). Once you have that down, try playing along with a song, but again: slow it down to start, and only after you can play at the slower tempo speed up a bit.
I’m at the beginning of Grade 3, so still a beginner. For me, once I got this strumming pattern down, it became much easier to learn new ones. Each time, I have to begin very slowly, and increase tempo very gradually. But it keeps getting easier to progress more quickly! Hope this helps. 
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There was a time not long ago I did not think it would be possible for me to move between three chords without any gap. When I went back and re-did some grade 1 and 2 modules, the “take your time” and “slow down” advice sunk in. So, I figured I needed a focused plan. I set up the “One Min Trainer” app with a few two chord sets I was having trouble with. I used this to establish where I was; depending on the set I was between 30 and 60 bpm and not really “clean” either. Then, to train I used the “Time Trainer” set for 5 min per set at 30bpm. I did each set ten times every morning without fail for about a week without attempting to go faster. Just me and the birds on my back porch as the sun comes up. I noted really good progress after a week. I am a bit stunned at how well the practice slow, practice perfect and practice often plan works.
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Thank you for the advice. I’ll do downstrums on the bars with two chords changes.
Hi Hugo, you have good advice from others. I just wanted to add that you are not expected to be able to play the old faithful strum and change chords at this point in your progress. If you look at the text on the website for the module 4 practice for what you need to do to move on from module 4, it says that you just need to be able to play the “old faithful” strum with the fret hand muting the strings. I consider the “Old Faithful” song to be a challenge piece for extra practice. When you get to the end of Grade 1, module 7, you will have more time to work on this strum with songs, so don’t be too discouraged.
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