How much training per week?

Actual mat time is now at 2 classes/week as student and 2 classes/week teaching. I did my stint of 6-7 days on the mat and found it didn't help me much. I retain more, and enjoy my practice more now that I've balanced it with the rest of my life instead of letting it take over my life.

Bronson

Ok, how about a word from the working Moms on how much practice they can get in?

I can get about 4 hours of practice in during the week. Those hours are split in to two 2 hour sessions at the dojo. The rest of the time I am running the kids around to Scouts or music practice. Most nights I am home by 5:15 and out the door, on the road again by 6pm and not home until close to 10pm.

I would LOVE TO TRAIN MORE!!!!!

But as this chapter of my life is being written out, I see that the time I have with my kids being very limited, then they will be gone. I am very happy and very lucky that my son practices with me on one of these nights. My daughter is eligible to have her own drivers license so technically, she can drive herself to scouts BUT, I am also a leader in her Scout program...

When I am in the dojo, I am intense about my practicing and learning because I know what sacrifice I am making just to be there. In fact, my cubicle mates are getting used to me standing in the middle of my cubicle going through the moves that I learned the night before.

I am still trying to talk Miller Sensei in to opening the dojo on the weekends! But until that happens, I will enjoy each minute of what I am doing and learning.

~Trish

I've only been doing this a year, but I train three, maybe four days a week, usually two classes (an hour each) each time. All in all around 6-8 hours per week.

I've tried more than that, but I found myself getting way more sore and/or injured.

Mike Sigman wrote: I've listened to experts say that they even spent time stirring the soup with their middle, openning doors using the force from the ground, doing everything in fact, with the correct movement. So my 2 cents is that how many times someone goes to practice during a week doesn't quite cover the subject.

I agree with this strongly.

As I sit here typing, I am constantly working to adjust my posture and refine my movements from computer to computer. Whenever I move I work and experiment with dropping weight, moving from center, unifiying the motion in my body, and trying to constantly 'fall' in the various directions of my movement in order to change the sensation of falling from a startled moment to a relaxed movement of constant recovery.

These sorts of exercises also apply to my intellectual studies, whether concerning Aikido or the various activities in the rest of my life. I don't see how these things cannot be training, even though they most certainly do not occur in the dojo.

Intensive training on 'techniques' in the dojo is great, but it can also be misleading. In many classes, I've watched dispairingly while too many people focussed on what seemed to me to be the wrong things. The things that have had the biggest and clearest impact on my training and on my small degree of ability have invariably been the little things I can and frankly must train outside of the dojo.

Even when I was training 30+ hours a week IN the dojo.

Tarik

Jamie D. Ducusin wrote: I'm there for every class offered (five times each week), including helping out with the kids/beginners' classes twice a week --- so in total, that amounts to roughly 10 hours (sometimes more if I get in some extra training with Sensei before classes) each week. But then, I also have some pretty high aspirations for my training; so ideally, it would be nice at some point to train more (say, in an uchideshi kind of situation), especially while I'm relatively young and --- as of yet --- childless. I would have to concur with Ledyard Sensei's assessment of a minimum of three days a week of practice to maintain steady progress --- this is exactly the same thing my own instructor recommends. But then, of course, this would greatly depend upon your own Aikido goals. Cheers!

I was wondering what rank are you and how do you compare to the other students in terms of commitment?

Derek Gaudet wrote: Every minute of every day ... ....As long as your thinking aikido, then it is a form of training...

I completely agree. Studies have shown that even visualizing doing something in your head can greatly improve your skill and understanding of (whatever that thing is). I've heard that people who visualize and train physically usually perform better than those who only train physically. Not only that but i've heard that those who only visualize also progress faster than those who only train physically.

I'll send some url's later. Don't have time right now i'm at school lol. (yes this is where your tax dollars go)

Paige Frazier wrote: I'll send some url's later. Don't have time right now i'm at school lol. (yes this is where your tax dollars go)

If you're in Florida, I want them back.