Hours of practice
Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2018 11:28 amOn another forum the question came up on how many hours you should practice to achieve a professional level of competence. In my younger more fanatical days I recall practicing 4-5 hours a day, 5-6 days a week, this did not include thinking about it and trying to figure out what I was doing. This also implies quality as well as quantity. I checked out some other arts/physical disciplines as follows
Dance: Sara Matthews is the director of the Central School of Ballet and a former professional dancer. She told Channel 4 News that dancers can only deal with the pressures of reaching the top because they love dancing.“It has to be – it’s too demanding otherwise,” she said. “When I stopped dancing, one of the first things I noticed was that I didn’t wake up in pain every morning.”Professional dancers have often trained for more than a decade before they join a company, with the most intense vocational training beginning at 16. When I stopped dancing, one of the first things I noticed was that I didn’t wake up in pain every morning. SARA MATTHEWS, CENTRAL SCHOOL OF BALLET While training, students will dance between six and seven hours a day. In most professional companies, a morning class at 10 starts the day, and they could rehearse through until 6pm, with breaks. This punishing schedule is usually done up to six days a week.
Piano: I followed concert pianist Stephen Hough’s (@houghhough) Twitter feed yesterday and was fascinated to find him answering questions regarding his practice regime. I thought it most interesting that he generally managed about four hours practice per day. No doubt, he has a very busy schedule and must have to squeeze practising in around many other professional demands. However, he performs at the highest level and pianists are frequently advised that in order to achieve this, they must practice most of the day. Indeed lots do and become reclusive as a result. I confess I was a little like this when I was much younger. Hiding away at the piano working furiously! Many successful concert pianists don’t spend hours and hours practising though – four hours per day is often deemed all that is necessary.
Squash: A typical pro athlete would train around 5-6 hours a day 6 days a week. This might not seem like a lot of hours but the intensity of training is ridiculous. In fact, without sounding pompous, an average fit individual would struggle to make it through one of our warm-ups. Take a particular endurance session of a former world champion squash player (I do NOT recommend trying this at home). His training session would involve getting on a spinning bike with a heart rate monitor strapped around his chest. He’d then start pedalling hard until his heart rate hit 190 beats per minute which he’d maintain for a duration of 10 minutes. This would be followed by a 3-minute break and the cycle would be repeated 6 times!
Dance: Sara Matthews is the director of the Central School of Ballet and a former professional dancer. She told Channel 4 News that dancers can only deal with the pressures of reaching the top because they love dancing.“It has to be – it’s too demanding otherwise,” she said. “When I stopped dancing, one of the first things I noticed was that I didn’t wake up in pain every morning.”Professional dancers have often trained for more than a decade before they join a company, with the most intense vocational training beginning at 16. When I stopped dancing, one of the first things I noticed was that I didn’t wake up in pain every morning. SARA MATTHEWS, CENTRAL SCHOOL OF BALLET While training, students will dance between six and seven hours a day. In most professional companies, a morning class at 10 starts the day, and they could rehearse through until 6pm, with breaks. This punishing schedule is usually done up to six days a week.
Piano: I followed concert pianist Stephen Hough’s (@houghhough) Twitter feed yesterday and was fascinated to find him answering questions regarding his practice regime. I thought it most interesting that he generally managed about four hours practice per day. No doubt, he has a very busy schedule and must have to squeeze practising in around many other professional demands. However, he performs at the highest level and pianists are frequently advised that in order to achieve this, they must practice most of the day. Indeed lots do and become reclusive as a result. I confess I was a little like this when I was much younger. Hiding away at the piano working furiously! Many successful concert pianists don’t spend hours and hours practising though – four hours per day is often deemed all that is necessary.
Squash: A typical pro athlete would train around 5-6 hours a day 6 days a week. This might not seem like a lot of hours but the intensity of training is ridiculous. In fact, without sounding pompous, an average fit individual would struggle to make it through one of our warm-ups. Take a particular endurance session of a former world champion squash player (I do NOT recommend trying this at home). His training session would involve getting on a spinning bike with a heart rate monitor strapped around his chest. He’d then start pedalling hard until his heart rate hit 190 beats per minute which he’d maintain for a duration of 10 minutes. This would be followed by a 3-minute break and the cycle would be repeated 6 times!
