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Old 10-28-2010, 11:02 PM   #75
George S. Ledyard
 
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Dojo: Aikido Eastside
Location: Bellevue, WA
Join Date: Jun 2000
Posts: 2,670
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Re: Is two Days a week enough?

Quote:
Rabih Shanshiry wrote: View Post
George,

Forgive me if I missed it, but what role does at-home training play in your equation? Does practice time spent out of the dojo count for anything?

How would you reconcile the person who attends your dojo 3x per week and doesn't practice at home with the person who can only attend twice and yet trains everyday on their own time?

I have a hard time believing that the former practitoner has much advantage (if any) over the latter. In fact, I'd tend to argue the opposite.

What do you think?

...rab
Well, it's not that I don't put some value on training at home... I used to do 1000 sword cuts each day, practiced my iaido... used to do some solo work, such as it was, watched tons of videos, back when you actually had to buy them... But none of that is worth much without hands on partner work. This art is about connection. It is fine to do things at home which can augment your practice but as a substitute for the hands on partner practice, no. Outside work can make your partner practice stronger, calmer, more precise, but it isn't any kind of substitute.

There's a reason that you don't get to check off your home-study hours on your attendance card at the dojo. Those solo training hours don't count when calculating your training hours towards the next test. Two days a week at the dojo is still two days a week. I can pretty much guarantee that someone training two days a week at the dojo and doing all sorts of solo training at home, will only be marginally, if at all better at his paired practice than the person who just trains twice a week and watches TV at home.

George S. Ledyard
Aikido Eastside
Bellevue, WA
Aikido Eastside
AikidoDvds.Com
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