the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

May I know how many minutes/hours in a day/week/month do you put into practicing your art?

It would also be nice to know the style you do, and how long you've been into it.

Let me start:
I practice 1 to 2 hours at a time, around 4 to 5 days of the week.

Been into Karate and Grappling for over 30 years combined. Planning on learning some meditation as I believe that's what I lack, though I may be wrong. That's why I'm here, to learn what path to follow.

I personally know two of master David Chan's disciples, so I might try to learn from them, but not yet sure. I found this forum only a few weeks ago through the video about Fajing, my friend told me to check it out from the thread.

About the same. Meh...been more consistent lately. More like 2 hours/day all week. I tend to only train an hour at least a couple days or miss a day altogether but then I also put in 3 or more hours on all Sundays and many Saturdays. So it averages out to about 2 hours/day. On most days I split it up morning and evening. Taiji in the morning and Baji at night.

My advice would be to stop looking for a path to follow and start looking for the reasons why you train instead.

Before kids or after kids?

Now that I have kids I practice a lot less, but when I do I get a lot more out of it.

I think in some ways sometimes have less time you get more out of your time because you work on the essentials. Before I had kids I would work on things that were more long term goals, now I focus on the little victories and little goals and I progress quicker in that way.

Life is strange.

I try to train about ten minutes a week. That seems to be enough to maintain my skill to beat all the friends/students/teachers at my current dojo.

Haha, just kidding (mostly).

Honestly, since I recently graduated college, I am back doing manual labor, which I count as training. You should hear the comments I get at work for the way I do things and the strange way I move around while carrying concrete and steel beams. Very hilarious.

I probably only do an average of two "formally structured" hours a day, but get to do some sparring and wrestling at work too. I also jog, lift, and skip rope, and these things directly improve my fighting capability, or so my shiai results say.

The arts I study and how long are listed in the intro section....I think.

i have no need for training. i am the very embodiment of T3H AW3SOM3.

qiphlow wrote:i have no need for training. i am the very embodiment of T3H AW3SOM3.

its giving me a hard on

Ian Cipperly wrote:Honestly, since I recently graduated college, I am back doing manual labor, which I count as training. You should hear the comments I get at work for the way I do things and the strange way I move around while carrying concrete and steel beams. Very hilarious.

some xylh master believe that the martial art must always be in the mind, so even when walking it is training. i would not go to that extreme, but i believe that they mean to say it should be a way of life, so it becomes naturally a part of you.

its not strange, i know of xy practitioners who beng quan for 1 or 2 km to their teacher's place to practice and do the same back home. sue it looks silly, but that is their level of dedication: like its gonna cost them their life if they dun do it.

all the time
unless i HAVE to
do something differently
or
i forget myself

Strange wrote:its not strange, i know of xy practitioners who beng quan for 1 or 2 km to their teacher's place to practice and do the same back home. sue it looks silly, but that is their level of dedication: like its gonna cost them their life if they dun do it.

That's how a person develops skill. I try to get my English students to do something like this, but only 1 has ever done it, and he did it without me suggesting. Most people are too self-conscious and afraid of looking out of place to use their creative energy.

wiesiek wrote:all the time
unless i HAVE to
do something differently
or
i forget myself

You da man!

solo: usually 20 minutes per day, max 45 minutes.

partner: 2-3x per week, 1 or 2 hours.

improving much faster than when I practiced several hours a day.

Ian wrote:solo: usually 20 minutes per day, max 45 minutes.

partner: 2-3x per week, 1 or 2 hours.

improving much faster than when I practiced several hours a day.

Bingo!

That's what I was getting at, in some ways with less time I actually get more done because my training is a lot more practical.

Obviously that's not completely accurate, but I still can see my progress even if I just train 3 times a week at an hour and half each time. Before I used to train 3 hours a day, everyday. The point is it's not so much how much you practice as much as it is about what you are practicing.

I heard this for years before I figured it out. But basically you work on the things that need work including for your strengths and weaknesses. I think the problem that I used to have is I would work on too many things or just work on hard things, now I realize it's just as important to work on things that come easy as it is to work on things which are hard.

In judo they have the idea of finding your favorite technique. Once you find that your coach may even have you only use that one technique so that you completely master it and all of it's variations. I think this is one of the most useful ways to train, instead of always trying to do something new or difficult find what's natural for you and run with it.

As I've stated recently, training to acquire the skills to beat multi-hour/day-training martial artists really doesn't take all that much time. These kinda sum it up for me:

Personally, I'd rather go catch a movie, come home and spend an hour or two drinking some beer with my buddies, watch some TV, then take 5 minutes to whip the snot out of the guy who's spent the whole day training, but that's just me.

and

....it's a simple matter of the fact that it does not take 8 hours a day of training (or anything close to that) to learn to fight effectively. It's when folks start bragging about it as if somehow it makes them better fighters than those who do not train that long at a stretch that I have to giggle. In fact, I often like to turn it around on them and state that if it takes you 8 hours per training session to be able to fight, either you're a slack-ass who doesn't know how to train hard, or your teacher sucks, or your material sucks, or some combination of all of the above.

No argument with what's been said so far, but would also like to add that there are additional reasons to train. Training is my primary form of exercise, I enjoy it, and I like to develop skills that are really not necessary for ass-whoopin' (although they are relevant to it), but are fun and cool nonetheless.