First of all, play the lesson demo without playing your guitar. Just listen to it, and tap your foot every beat = 1, 2, 3, 4. Do this until your muscle memory kicks in and it becomes automatic. Now – while you are tapping your foot on every beat – also clap your hands on beats 2 & 4. Do this until it becomes automatic. Incidentally, this is exactly the beat of all reggae songs.

Next, start playing the lesson. The trick is to play it super slow, and I mean really really slow. Just work with about 4 bars of it, and make sure you have your foot tapping spot on, and your slap on beats 2 and 4. This is kind of like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time. Slowly increase your speed until your muscle memory kicks in.

Also, you might want to learn lesson EP187 which is fairly easy.

Also, you might want your foot tapping to sound a bit louder:

Stuart,
Welcome to A.M. Not sure there’s a right or wrong way to go here, but whatever you end up doing you want it to become natural and not something you have to think about. When I listen to music with a strong backbeat, I generally tap my foot to beats two and four. But when I am playing I tap all four beats. If you are trying to work on rhythm, I suggest tapping to all four beats, so you have smaller subdivisions to deal with. As Sunjamr pointed out slow things way down and pay close attention to whether notes are on or off the beat. I don’t suggest counting, unless you are struggling with a very small segment. As you point out, it just makes things more difficult.

One other thing to think about when judging your musical timing. Record a piece that you know very well and listen to it while not playing. I often find that small rhythmic breaks for me are because I don’t quite know the tune well enough and there is a bit of hesitation.

Hope that helps.

Bob

Even though you are not playing a chord on the 1 (down beat)your strum arm is still doing a down stroke, you have to do this to keep time/rhymn. Your foot will still be tapping 1 2 3 4, to mimic the 1 2 3 4 of your arm..its co-ordination which comes with practise.
Practise everything slowly as Steve has already said..good luck.

I like to set up a metronome, tap my foot to it while listening, not playing. 1&2&3&4&, tapping on the numbers only. Then I play with the metronome and the foot tap both. later, I eliminate the metronome but if I feel like I’m not keeping time, I add it in again.