Generally, how often and how long should you train per week?

[kuniggety]

I'm feeling this guy is just trolling us and we're going in circles telling him the same thing. He just won't listen.

 

[Tames D]

I'm feeling this guy is just trolling us and we're going in circles telling him the same thing. He just won't listen.

Ya think?

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

I'm feeling this guy is just trolling us and we're going in circles telling him the same thing. He just won't listen.

Maybe, or he has some serious anxiety issues and hypochondria that he needs to get worked on. Either way, it keeps me from getting too bored

 

[kehcorpz]

Hypochondria? Why are you saying this? This isn't nice.

 

[Tames D]

Hypochondria? Why are you saying this? This isn't nice.

But you are wrong. This is a "friendly martial arts community". It even says it on the logo.

 

[kehcorpz]

But it still hurt my feelings.

 

[Chris Parker]

I'm just worried that I can't deal with the pressure of having to understand stuff during the class. I mean this is a very short window of opportunity
which you have to learn something. I am somebody who learns and understands things better when I have a lot of time and when I'm not under pressure.
What if I go there for 3h and during this time I wasn't able to gain more understanding? This would be very discouraging and then the pressure would be
higher as well next time.

It's not a short window of opportunity, it's a class. If you don't understand what you are shown, ask to see it again. And you're not expected to suddenly just "get it" from a single training session… one class leads into the next, and so on.

You don't have an idea what martial art classes are like until you start one. So start one.

For example if you're shown a technique in class and you can't repeat it yet then you also cannot practice it at home which means you can't do anything
in the meantime to get better and this is also discouraging.

Frankly, that's garbage. You can practice whatever you are shown to the best of your ability, and you get corrected more and more as time goes on. I mean… you do get that practicing is how you get better, yeah?

Another example, if you suck at math and understand nothing in math class then you still have the chance to go over it at home and then understand it!
But you cannot do this with techniques can you? How shall you practice a technique at home if you cannot even repeat it yet? Then there's nothing to
practice!

What? Dude… yes, you absolutely do have something to practice! It might not be "perfect" yet, but that's why you practice it.

Seriously, get to a damn class already. You're worried about things you don't understand. None of these concerns are realistic.

This is the same as trying to memorize a song if you don't remember parts of the lyrics then you also cannot try to memorize them.

No, it's not, because it's not about memorising anything.

Get to a damn class already.

No this is not what I mean. Does nobody understand me?
I am talking about making progress.

I understand you, but you don't understand what "making progress" is in martial arts. You don't have anything like a "limited window", you work at your own pace, and progress as your talent and dedication allow. There's no amount of material that needs to covered in any particular amount of time. There's no requirement to remember everything from one class to the next… commonly the material will be covered (albeit in variations) over and over again. Your job (as a student) is simply to follow what you're shown as best you can, and to practice what you are able to. That's it.

Imagine you're a professional dancer and the instructor demonstrates a new coreography and
does all the moves in front of you and you watch him and can't memorize the stuff and he repeats
it a few times and you still cannot memorize it and then the class is over. And next time you pick
up where you left and couldn't practice anything in between.

That is not how martial art classes operate, and dude, you are nowhere near a professional. Do you think your hypothetical dancer was able to suddenly learn complex choreography from the first class they took?

Your entire understanding of martial arts and martial art classes is based in unrealistic, and entirely flawed assumptions and guesses. Get to a damn school. You're learning nothing here.

But it still hurt my feelings.

I'm going to be completely blunt, then.

You need to grow up.

You've been here for a few weeks, coming up with more and more foreseen problems and issues in something you're not even doing yet… combined with posts and threads dedicated to the (physical) problems you think you'd have in pursuing martial arts. This thought pattern you're showing tells us that you have some real psychological blocks in place, and hypochondria was suggested as one. Your feelings were hurt by that? Grow up. You're not fond of the tone being taken now? Get over it. You don't like being thought of as a potential troll? Then listen to what you've been told. You want to think of more problems that haven't occurred yet, and haven't held back literally millions of martial art students around the world? Forget them.

Frankly, son, you came here because you saw us as a potential source for expert opinions of martial arts training and practices (as we are actually training in a variety of them). Good. But you've then ignored everything you've been told in order to further this wish to find problems for yourself. Honestly, if you want to do that, go for it… but we will be running out of the little patience we have very soon. Nothing you have come up with has stopped many, many people before you, and frankly, you ain't that special a case. So either take our advice, and get to a damn school, or (if you insist on finding yet another reason to avoid it, or think you won't get what you expect out of it) don't… but stop with the incessant lunacy of these questions and concerns. None of them have any merit at all.

 

[EvanWinther]

My Dojang is open 5 days a week but I would suggest somewhere that's open about 1 hour 3 days a week

 

[Gerry Seymour]

How do you practice solo forms without partner or dummy? What forms do you mean?

I watched a video where the instructor demonstrated a lot of techniques first he showed them on a dummy and then he showed them against an attacker.
It provided a real good overview over different techniques but at the same time I thought this stuff all looks so complicated even mastering just 1 of these
many techniques probably takes months. Now imagine there are 50 of them then you can calculate how many years you need to learn them all. If every single
one of the techniques exists for a purpose then this means it's important and you can't just replace it with something else you already learned, right?

Just one comment on this - you can't figure the amount of time for one technique, then multiply that by the number of techniques, for at least two reasons.

1) You won't learn them one at a time. While you're working on one, you'll also be working on several others over those same months.

2) The techniques, eventually, cease to become the point. The best practitioners I've seen - regardless of art - don't rely on pure techniques. They rely on principles they learned from the techniques. Sure, they can perform the pure techniques exquisitely, but when reacting to a fluid situation, they actually spend much of their time in what I call the "grey areas" - those areas where they're doing something that is part this technique and part that technique and perfectly suited to the situation.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

but how do you practice a form on your own without risking that you do it wrong and then train your body to do it in a wrong way so that you cant even correct it anymore?

for example i watched a docu about kung fu monks. these guys already knew what they are doing and still the master corrected them all the time showing them little things
which they did wrong. this shows that you always need somebody to watch and correct you.

You will do it wrong; there's no avoiding that. You have to do it as best you can, and make successive adjustments until it's kinda good. About that time, someone gives you a black belt (which you once thought would mean you were done) and you realize you are actually starting to understand stuff a little. Even when your instructor is hovering over you, you're not doing it right at first. You can't, because your muscles (okay, technically your neural pathways) are following too many old habits.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

But how much can you learn in 3h per week? And the chief instructor also won't be standing right next to you all the time
and supervise everything cause there are many other people there.

My concern is simply that during the actual training I'm not able to really pick up much cause of being too nervous and then
during the week I can't do anything on my own.

I don't think that Bruce Lee for example only trained 3h per week. He probably trained every day with somebody.

I realize that this is a major criteria. I need something where you can do something at home. If you cannot do anything
at home at all then this would be too frustrating for me cause then I have no influence on my progress at all!

How do I find out which kind of MA allows you to practice stuff on your own?

As others have said, you have to start. For now, this is mental masturbation. You're asking questions out of fear that the training won't be sufficient. The reality is that the zero training you're doing now is entirely insufficient, and always will be.

 

[moonhill99]

I have looked into different places in my area which offer different things and what I didn't like is
that they usually offer 2 training sessions per week and each of them takes 1-1,5 hours. this really isn't very much especially when you really want to improve quickly.

at another place you only train ONCE per week for 3 hours straight.

what do you think about this? does this even make sense or is it a waste of time? i mean I'm not
getting into anything knowing that this is some half-assed stuff where I needed 5 years to get to a point
where I can use it.

i wish I knew somebody personally who knows some kind of MA or SD system and who could basically
train me 10 hours daily. imagine how MUCH quicker you would progress if you trained 10 hours daily
for weeks compared to 3 ridiculous hours per week!

after a few weeks you'd have made more progress than you'd make in 2 years training 3 hours per week.

and alone at home you can't really train anything can you? i mean it's not like they show you something
in class and then you can spend hours at home on your own perfectioning it right? this really sucks.

I think you find a lot of people here train two or three times in a week. If you into MMA you probably train 5 times in a week some every day.

i wish I knew somebody personally who knows some kind of MA or SD system and who could basically
train me 10 hours daily. imagine how MUCH quicker you would progress if you trained 10 hours daily

Me no way. I could never put in a 6 hours that alone 10 hours. I would take 5 to 7 days a week being one or two hours than one day a week being 10 hours.

It blows my mind that Police Officer, Dispatcher, Doctor or Nurse can put in 10 hours shift. I have work part time jobs cause 8 hour shift is too much and 10 hours shift is just crazy.

I would take double shift jobs being 4 hours in morning and 4 hours in night than 8 hour all at one go.

You need time go home and eat and rest a bit. And have a shower and get some sleep before going out again. You body needs some sleep.

iat another place you only train ONCE per week for 3 hours straight.

You need at least two or three times a week. Going once a week is not enough.

 

[JR 137]

The best advice I can give is wait.

Wait until we develop the technology used in the movie The Matrix where they downloaded martial arts systems in the people's brains. Then you have no chance of making a mistake.

Then again, the programmer could've made a mistake that'll get you killed on the streets.

Keep reading about MA on the computer and posting questions. It'll all make sense that way. Everyone here will agree reading and posting here is a great substitute for training. I've spent enough time here to be able to skip classes for the rest of the year and still be ahead with my skills.

 

[drop bear]

My coach. And an indication of what you can do if you really want to.

Had to work. Still trained 6 days a week.
No teachers. Traveled to find them.
No club. Started one.


No Cookies | Daily Telegraph

Pretty much the more you train the better you will get.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

My coach. And an indication of what you can do if you really want to.

Had to work. Still trained 6 days a week.
No teachers. Traveled to find them.
No club. Started one.


No Cookies | Daily Telegraph

Pretty much the more you train the better you will get.

All else being equal, and assuming they are training reasonably well, yes. Though, as I quoted Shihan Bowe in another thread, "More isn't better. Better is better."

 

[drop bear]

All else being equal, and assuming they are training reasonably well, yes. Though, as I quoted Shihan Bowe in another thread, "More isn't better. Better is better."

It is a quote that needs to be taken in context.

If you are training for 8 hours a day but you are a gumby and are not fixing that then yes.

If you are training well and then pushing past your levels of endurance at the cost of bein sloppy. I think you benefit from that.

It is something i have adopted with pad work after some coaching by a top striker.

So i blast the pads hard and fast. And look like crap by the end of the round.

But i am hitting harder faster and have more control in my exhausted state than i had when i was preserving myself for the sake of technique.

Same with sparring. I just get murdered in. My last rounds. But i am still progressing ability wise. I just look silly

 

[Gerry Seymour]

It is a quote that needs to be taken in context.

If you are training for 8 hours a day but you are a gumby and are not fixing that then yes.

If you are training well and then pushing past your levels of endurance at the cost of bein sloppy. I think you benefit from that.

It is something i have adopted with pad work after some coaching by a top striker.

So i blast the pads hard and fast. And look like crap by the end of the round.

But i am hitting harder faster and have more control in my exhausted state than i had when i was preserving myself for the sake of technique.

Same with sparring. I just get murdered in. My last rounds. But i am still progressing ability wise. I just look silly

That's the point. You're training well, so more of "good" is "better". If someone is training badly for 30 hours a week, they'd be better off training well for 3.

 

[Tez3]

I did 12 hour shifts, two days, 2 nights for over 25 years. Often though the shifts would be longer because you can't just walk off in the middle of something. that's work, I wouldn't recommend training for that long.
One hour a week is better than nothing, more would be better but an hour is better than sitting at a computer pondering training and always saying but..........

 

[Kenpoguy123]

Has the op actually been here since Tames upset him and hurt his feelings lol

 

[Dylan9d]

Has the op actually been here since Tames upset him and hurt his feelings lol

Maybe he finally decided to start training