Don, you're right - it's surprising how you get better as you practise. :-) Technique is a large part. But also there is a large element of "sport-specific muscles".

You were saying about holding barre chords. If I hold my hands next to each other, the muscle at the base of my left thumb is noticeably over-developed. I wasn't born like that, and I wasn't naturally gifted - it's simply the result of *lots* of playing of barre chords. The more you do, the stronger you get. Initially holding it at all was an achievement, then holding it for a couple of seconds (long enough for the F chord in "House of the rising sun") was an achievement. Then try "Hotel California" and you find you've got a barre chord down for a bit over half the song, and that's *hard*. Technique will help for that, but ultimately there really is no alternative to building up strength/endurance. And *everyone* can build up that strength/endurance over time, simply by keeping on doing it.

It's not like running a marathon - it's more like a 10K run. Some people can do it better than others. But unless you have some genuine disability, absolutely anyone can do it if they put in the training time. I'd be prepared to bet that if you checked the hands of those frail-looking Chinese women classical guitarists, they'd have muscles in their hands that you really wouldn't expect.

Don't neglect technique though. Pure strength won't help you much if your hands are in a mechanically weak position - you might get away with it for a bit, but you won't be able to keep it up for long. But technique without the strength to implement it simply isn't going to work, and there's no magic spell to get that strength apart from simply keeping on practising.

Graham.