Hours to prepare

[terryl965]

In your opinion how many hours should a fight team practice to get ready for a major tournament like National or the junior Olympics?

And do you change your criteria for a smaller tournament?

Terry

 

[Aqua4ever]

Personally, I think it depends on the participants, and their ages. But hours. and hours and hours. Not all physical, mental work too. For big tournaments (eg. WKA World Championships) we start a training schedule eight weeks before, that gives a three day "break" before the day of leaving for the tournament. There's not only fighting practices, but cardio, sprints, endurance training and work on diet/water intake. I think we average around 7 hours of training a week, some of us push to eleven, but that adds the worry of burn out (**I'm seventeen, a lot of the team younger, some older**)
And yes, for smaller tournies its a lot less vigourous
take care
Aqua

 

[Slippery_Pete]

Our team trains all year long except from nationals to september...practice is every other saturday for about 6 hours...we attend tournaments all year long and normally average one to two tournaments a month...when nationals get close we have a sort of "camp"...for two weeks you are at the gym everyday for about 7 hours...diet starts if you need it and you get about a week or two break before nationals so you can get at your peak...no contact is allowed the week before...practice starts out with cardio for about an hour then paddle work and sparring techniques...after lunch break there is more cardio normally consisting of a run and stairs at the local stadium...when we get back more drills then always end with sparring full contact for about an hour or so...team members also learn to be very curtious (sp?) as we are expected to display our self very well for the sake of ourselves and be a good representation of our school...the instructor has been known to make you do crushers (killers) right at the tournament if you do not show proper respect...a lot of time and commitment is required for our team of about 20...but we normally score best team at the tournaments so i guess the high dicipline works out