'Lo from Scotland

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[Jimmy L]

Hi I have just started aikido about two weeks ago at my local leisure center and wanted to find a place where i could find out more about it and this seemed to be a good starting place.

One thing I was wondering is what is the normal amount of time spent at classes - I can only go once a week for about three hours at this class but i wanted to know if this is normal - i.e. should i be doing more?


Cheers! :)

[Mark Freeman]

The fact that you are doing any is a good start Jamie!
Practice what you can when you can, in time you will be able to assess whether you need more ( you probably will).
Don't push yourself too far to fast, the path of aikido is just that a path or 'way', as long as you are practicing with the right attitude and enjoying the process, you will keep going. Pacing a la hare and tortoise!

Welcome to the world of aikido and aikiweb :)

regards
Mark

[akiy]

Hi Jamie,

Welcome to AikiWeb.

As far as "normal" goes, that's entirely up to you and your capabilities.

Here's a poll I took a while back:

How many total hours were you on the mat for aikido training in the past seven days?
http://www.aikiweb.com/polls/results.html?poll_id=113

Hope that helps,

-- Jun

[Michael O'Brien]

Jamie,

If you are like many of us you'll soon be addicted and will never get enough. :) Generally speaking, most people recommend classes 2-3 days a week if at all possible because it helps to reinforce techniques more quickly. Just starting out a week between classes gives you plenty of time to forget some of the things you are working on. For the last few months I have been limited to training 2 days/week due to my schedule and it has been driving me nuts. Finally it looks like I'm going to be able to get in 3 days/week regularly and 4 days/week every other week.

[Lucy Smith]

Three hours??? Wow that's a lot of time for just one day! I would say that it's better to train less time, more days i.e. three days a week, one hour each day, but in three hours I'm sure you learn a lot so you don't need to worry. As Mark said, don't push yourself, time will tell.

Wellcome, hope you enjoy both Aikido and Aikiweb.
Lucy.