What do you do to vary up your solo training time?

[Alexander]

Having previously studied martial arts, I know one of the biggest impediments to getting skilled is how you structure your solo practice time. You can make it the same thing every day, and be bored of your schedule within a week. Or, you can vary it up to make it lively, exciting, and different.

So, I figured i'd just ask people what they do to spice up their training.

Personally, I just started Bagua and have had a lot of free time. I just graduated and got my first job, so I'm practicing many hours a day.

I tend to have some structure to my training sessions,

e.g. 1st part is footwork
2nd part is whole body training and strikes on the weight bag
3rd part is circle walk

From there I will divide it up. Say footwork for example. One day it will be something like this: work on pivot step, jump step, step through, 45* and 90* step, stepping combinations. Or it may be circle walking on the edge of bricks to improve rooting and sink into deeper stances.

Whole body training may be striking into the air slowly with various palms.

So what do you do to vary it up??

[I am...]

This answer might not be popular:

Ask yourself honestly, "Who is it that gets bored?". That answer leads to the answer of your question.

Training time is best spent training efficiently, from my viewpoint. "Bored" is often at odds with that goal, and if one can eliminate worrying about the concept of bored, one can get great results from the effort put into training.

[mrtoes]

Funnily enough I've recently been working on specialising on only a few things during my practice sessions.

I used to try and pack as much in as possible: Standing, santi, chi-gung, five elements, linking forms, animals, more chi-gung, standing to finish.

And I felt I just wasn't getting enough time in on any one thing, and doing so many exercises was feeding my monkey mind that just didn't want to knuckle down and focus on the task in hand. This is particularly a problem with some recent work that I find quite challenging and wasn't satisfied with the progress I was making. Recently I asked my teacher, who made a point of telling me that working on one or two things each session was extremely important and was the way to build co-ordination and get deeper into my practise.

So far it's been working pretty well. But hey, everyone's different and your mileage may vary - sounds like you might be having the time to put in a bunch more training than me so maybe not such a problem for you

Matthew

[johnwang]

You may want to ask yourself the following questions:

- What new skill do I want to develop?
- What old skill do I want to maintain?

Try to think about youself instead of any particular style. Don't limit yourself in the boundary of your style. If you like to train the "flying knee", go ahead to train it even if it's not in your style. The moment that you have broken your style boundary, you will be free for the rest of your life.

[Areios]

You may want to ask yourself the following questions:

- What new skill do I want to develop?
- What old skill do I want to maintain?

Try to think about youself instead of any particular style. Don't limit yourself in the boundary of your style. If you like to train the "flying knee", go ahead to train it even if it's not in your style. The moment that you have broken your style boundary, you will be free for the rest of your life.

+1 that is the best advice you can get. I would like to add that don't limit your traning time only to tech training. Get some strength and conditiononig etcetc. Martial world is a big one, there's never enough time for everithing.

[bailewen]

I generally train twice a day. Once in the morning and once at night. My morning routine doesn't change much. I'm heading out now in about 5 minutes. Just the taiji form. Hard to mix it up as just that one thing takes over an hour. Yesterday it took an hour and a half.

For my evening sessions I mix it up a lot. I always start with doing my Baji form a couple times but then I play it by ear. I used to try and give my self set numbers of reps of things but I got burnt out and eventually even got sick. Now I try to really listen to what I really feel like training. Sometimes I mix in a little Xingyi, sometimes I even throw in a little Hung Gar. Whatever feels right.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

You may want to ask yourself the following questions:

- What new skill do I want to develop?
- What old skill do I want to maintain?

Try to think about youself instead of any particular style. Don't limit yourself in the boundary of your style. If you like to train the "flying knee", go ahead to train it even if it's not in your style. The moment that you have broken your style boundary, you will be free for the rest of your life.

This is good advice!

[SPJ]

second that.

we have to know our strong points and weak points.

we may need to work on our weakness more, either improve it or practice other things to cover it.

some might say that actually we need to spend most of our time to make strong points even stronger.

both are correct.

how to vary things depending on us.

[johnwang]

how to ... depending on us.

SC master: Do you want to learn my Confucious double edges sword form?
JW: No! I don't.
SC master: Do you want to learn my Pi Shang (chopping dodging) single edge knife form?
JW: No! I don't.
SC master: Do you want to learn my Lo Han Chuan form?
JW: No! I don't.
SC master: What do you want to learn from me?
JW: I'm only interesting in your SC.

Adam Hsu would love to learn both the Confucious double edges sword form and Pi Shang (chopping dodging) single edge knife form but the SC master didn't want to show it. It may be my fault that both "Confucious double edges sword form" and "Pi Shang (chopping dodging) single edge knife form" are lost forever because I refused to learn it.

[edededed]

Ha ha... It seems typical that they only want to teach people who don't want to learn it... (The people who want it most usually don't get the opportunity...) Maybe instinct tells us not to give things to people who most desire it...

[Areios]

how to ... depending on us.

Adam Hsu would love to learn both the Confucious double edges sword form and Pi Shang (chopping dodging) single edge knife form but the SC master didn't want to show it. It may be my fault that both "Confucious double edges sword form" and "Pi Shang (chopping dodging) single edge knife form" are lost forever because I refused to learn it.

But the SC is going to live