Finding the position without looking
Run a fingertip along the middle row of letters. Two keys have a small raised bump or ridge: F and J. They exist for exactly this purpose. Settle your left index finger on the F bump and your right index on the J bump, let the other fingers fall onto the keys beside them, and your hands are placed correctly without a single glance down.
Do this every time you sit down, and whenever you notice your hands have drifted. Over a few weeks it stops being a conscious step.
The reach rule
Each finger moves up or down to its own keys and comes straight back. That return is the part people skip, and it is what makes the whole system work: because every finger always knows where it is, your hands never have to be re-found.
Two reaches are longer than the rest and worth practising separately. The left index finger covers both R T F G V B, and the right index covers Y U H J N M — six keys each, including a sideways stretch into the middle of the keyboard. Those stretches are where most beginners either slow down or quietly hand the key to the wrong finger.
Posture, briefly
- Forearms roughly level with the keyboard, elbows loose at your sides.
- Wrists floating rather than resting on the desk or the laptop edge. Anchored wrists make fingers stretch instead of hands move.
- Fingers curved, as if resting on a ball, with the key pressed by the tip rather than the pad.
- Screen high enough that your head stays level. If you are looking down at the screen, you will look down at the keys too.
- Shoulders down. Typing fast from tense shoulders is how a typing session turns into an ache.
If your hands hurt within a few minutes, that is a setup problem rather than a fitness problem. Change the height of the desk or the chair before you change your technique.
How to practise this week
Keep it to the home row for the first few sessions. Type asdf jkl; asdf jkl; until your fingers find the keys on their own, then move to real words that live mostly on that row — sad, fall, flask, also, lads. Only then add the top and bottom rows.
Once you can hold position without looking, a short one minute test is a useful weekly checkpoint, and the drills page covers what to do with the keys you keep missing.