Putting more into it

[drop bear]

Otherwise ice baths,swimming,massage,yoga that sort of stuff.

 

[hoshin1600]

Maybe I'm confused but I thought the OP was about learning a martial art? As I read many of the posts it seems everyone is more focused on the physical athletic ability rather than proficiency as a martial artist.
While athletic ability is paramount in sports and valuable as a martial artist it certainly is not or should not be equated to martial arts ability unless you are competing in a sport environment. Compare Yip Man to Jon jones..?? Does this mean Yip Man was not as good a martial artist?

When training in martial arts I agree 3 hours is better than 1. But I feel that as those ratios increase there is an effect of diminishing returns. Can we say then that 100 hours is better than 70? If this were the case than even in sport compitition we would have to assume to he a champion all one would have to do would be to put in more hours at the gym. BUT We Know This Is Not The case.
It is said that it takes one thousand reps of an action for the nural net in the brain to start to develop. After only a few hours those connections begin to degrade. So by a certain logic it would seem that more is better. but as any MA instructor knows it sometimes takes months for an action to be preformed correctly. Every time you preform an action incorrectly you are in graining and creating alternative unwanted brain connections and the more you repeat the stronger these nural connections fet,the harder they are to replace.

The mind needs time to absorb information. While similar to the nural connections of physical action this is not exactly the same. The brain has to make cognitive connections to realize that "A"is related to "B" and this can sometimes he linked to intelligence or what I call awareness. I have had students that I would verbally tell to do something like a small detail and these instructions will not be absorbed. As time passes there will he an "Oh I get it" moment where the student was finally able to comprehend and apply what I had been saying for a long time. The brain just had not connected the Dots yet.

I also wonder about MA practioners who practice but do not study the martial arts. I call these "time clock" martial artists. They come to a class and punch in so to speak and punch out after class and do not think about it again until the next class.

They practice but do not study. When people are questioned they usually say the most important aspects in life are health, wealth and relationships. But to really find a level of success in these requires one to study. There are books on relationships and how to get a long with peers. How to eat better, how to cook healthier foods. There are billionaires who have written books on how they did it. And very few take the time to read and study these things. I see so many MA instructors spouting there skills and giving classes on women's rape self defense. And yet not one I have ever talked to ever read an FBI builtin on the subject. Or knows the standard classifications of rapists. Have they talked to rape crisis administrators on what they should be including in these classes....few very few have. As a martial artist you should also study your topic not just show up and wait to be spoon fed by the instructor.
MA is not just about doing push ups, sparing rounds and bag work.

Sorry this turned into a little rant

 

[PhotonGuy]

DB, do you think this kind of intensive training like cramming every thing into a shorter time span would be suitable for, and should be made available as far as possible, to ALL students? Jx

Well its not for everybody and there are limits as to just how much you can cram. The person who only trains once a week for an hour each time, they might have all sorts of reasons for only training one hour a week and it doesn't mean they're lazy or they don't want to learn. Maybe they've got a really busy schedule and they're only able to fit in one hour a week. Maybe they're focusing more on other stuff and they're doing the martial arts just as something on their side. But for whatever reason, they probably will not develop knowledge, skill, and ability as fast as the person training three times a week for two hours each time. And as for intensive training, just look at Bruce Lee, the founder of JKD, talk about cramming.

 

[PhotonGuy]

I believe PG is still fixating on the zen-influenced advice offered to him in some of his previous threads advancing the opinion that extra time and energy focused on achieving a black belt (or any other goalpost indicating a certain level of ability) is somehow counter-productive. Such advice might be sound in the context of aiming for zen-style "enlightenment", but it's factually inaccurate in the context of acquiring physical skills.

Im talking about advancement in skill and ability in general not necessarily any kind of rank such as black belt. To get a black belt you also have to know what your sensei requires for it and this might involve talking to your sensei but that's a topic for another thread. There are two reasons I chose the JKD folder for this thread. First of all, I didn't want people thinking I was fixated on rank and from what I know JKD doesn't use rank so therefore people wouldn't have that assumption if I posted this in a JKD folder. Second of all, the founder of JKD, Bruce Lee, aside from being one of the most recognizable and admired figures in the martial arts, was well known for really putting astounding, what some people would call ridiculous, time, work, and effort into the martial arts. I don't know if you could say he rushed it, I wouldn't say he did, but the fact of the matter is he did learn much faster than most of his peers for the very reason that he put so much more into it. There is an account of him taking lessons from a kung fu instructor and mastering in three days what it would take the average student to learn the basics of in three months.

 

[Xue Sheng]

There is an account of him taking lessons from a kung fu instructor and mastering in three days what it would take the average student to learn the basics of in three months.

Source please

 

[Jenna]

Well its not for everybody and there are limits as to just how much you can cram. The person who only trains once a week for an hour each time, they might have all sorts of reasons for only training one hour a week and it doesn't mean they're lazy or they don't want to learn. Maybe they've got a really busy schedule and they're only able to fit in one hour a week. Maybe they're focusing more on other stuff and they're doing the martial arts just as something on their side. But for whatever reason, they probably will not develop knowledge, skill, and ability as fast as the person training three times a week for two hours each time. And as for intensive training, just look at Bruce Lee, the founder of JKD, talk about cramming.

Was Bruce Lee not some thing special? or can anybody do the same? Jx

 

[PhotonGuy]

Was Bruce Lee not some thing special? or can anybody do the same? Jx

Bruce Lee was an exceptional individual. As I said, training of such intensity is not for everybody.

 

[Jenna]

Bruce Lee was SO exceptional and SO singleminded over his learning, his preparation, his philosophy and his physical training I would wonder if OP is not only 'not for everybody' and but not for most people???

 

[PhotonGuy]

Source please

A kung fu instructor describes it in a video documentary about Bruce Lee. I will try to find the video on youtube.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

Maybe I'm confused but I thought the OP was about learning a martial art? As I read many of the posts it seems everyone is more focused on the physical athletic ability rather than proficiency as a martial artist.
While athletic ability is paramount in sports and valuable as a martial artist it certainly is not or should not be equated to martial arts ability unless you are competing in a sport environment. Compare Yip Man to Jon jones..?? Does this mean Yip Man was not as good a martial artist?

I went back and re-read the previous posts, and I don't see anyone talking about just developing physical athletic ability. When I mention the necessary physical conditioning for intensive, high-volume training, I'm not talking about preparation for athletic competition (unless that's the kind of martial art you're practicing). I'm talking about having your body prepared for the specific stresses of your martial art. If you were to jump straight from training aikido 2 hours a week to training 20 hours a week, you would stand a decent chance of being injured from the stress of taking that many falls and receiving that many joint locks. If you were training Kali, you would probably end up with blisters all over your hands and possibly have issues with your wrists or rotator cuffs from so much swinging sticks. Your body needs time to adapt to this kind of use.

When training in martial arts I agree 3 hours is better than 1. But I feel that as those ratios increase there is an effect of diminishing returns. Can we say then that 100 hours is better than 70? If this were the case than even in sport compitition we would have to assume to he a champion all one would have to do would be to put in more hours at the gym. BUT We Know This Is Not The case.

There is a point of diminishing returns in terms of hours invested. However that point is beyond what most people will ever reach. For most of us, we will run out of available time in our schedule or the ability to physically recuperate before we reach the point where additional hours of practice in the week are helpful in building skill. 100 hours per week might not be better than 70 hours, but 30 hours per week is a whole lot better than 5 for building skill.

Regarding sport competition, there absolutely is a drive among serious athletes to train harder and longer than the other guy. Matches are often won by virtue of one athlete being willing to spend more work on preparation than the other guy. At the world champion level, however, all the competitors are already training so hard that they are pushing the limits of the human body to recover. They have to walk a fine line - try to be better prepared than the other guy without breaking their own bodies down faster than they can rebuild.

I also wonder about MA practioners who practice but do not study the martial arts. I call these "time clock" martial artists. They come to a class and punch in so to speak and punch out after class and do not think about it again until the next class.

Yep. I'm a big fan of supplementing mat time with time spent studying outside the dojo. Time spent reading, watching videos, asking questions, thinking, and visualizing can absolutely help get the most out of your mat time.

I do suspect that people who spend a lot of time on the mat are also more likely to spend time on outside study as well, but I don't know any way to easily verify that.

I see so many MA instructors spouting there skills and giving classes on women's rape self defense. And yet not one I have ever talked to ever read an FBI builtin on the subject. Or knows the standard classifications of rapists. Have they talked to rape crisis administrators on what they should be including in these classes....few very few have. As a martial artist you should also study your topic not just show up and wait to be spoon fed by the instructor.

As Chris Parker is fond of pointing out, martial arts expertise is not necessarily well correlated with real world self-defense expertise beyond the context of the specific martial art. Understanding the dynamics behind rape would be a good example of that. This is not necessarily a problem - but it can be one when an instructor thinks that having a black belt in xyz-jutsu automatically makes him an expert in how violent crimes occur. (It also is a problem when an instructor thinks that having that black belt makes him qualified as a life coach, an "enlightened master", or anything else beyond the specific skills that went into achieving the rank.)

 

[Blindside]

I have been an instructor for something like 14 years now, in that time the number of students I have had that I have had to say "hey, stop doing all that practicing at home, you are ingraining bad habits" is zero. Has someone practiced something incorrectly? Sure, but then we catch it, fix it, and go on from there.

Anyone actually have examples of where your students progressed more slowly or not benefitted for having practiced alot and tried to get their reps in?

 

[Steve]

I would say that as far as the point of dimishing returns is concerned, it depends upon how the time is used.

If you spend 8 hours trying to learn new things, you're certainly going to reach a functional limit to what can be absorbed. But, an hour learning something new and 7 hours practicing that thing could be very useful. Look at how people learn to do a job. 8 hour day for a new employee. I teach you to perform a task and you do it. Over and over. Then I teach you something else. There's no point of diminishing returns on your learning, provided I don't throw too much at you all at once in an information dump.

 

[Gnarlie]

I would say that as far as the point of dimishing returns is concerned, it depends upon how the time is used.

If you spend 8 hours trying to learn new things, you're certainly going to reach a functional limit to what can be absorbed. But, an hour learning something new and 7 hours practicing that thing could be very useful. Look at how people learn to do a job. 8 hour day for a new employee. I teach you to perform a task and you do it. Over and over. Then I teach you something else. There's no point of diminishing returns on your learning, provided I don't throw too much at you all at once in an information dump.

That depends on the skill in question in terms of practicability. Some things need to be practiced little and often, some things just need volume drilling, some things need time between to bed in. Agree with your point though, the relative gains would depend on having sensibly structured training.

I do think that time without training is a factor too. Sometimes just sleeping on a newly learned skill can make it click the next time.

 

[hoshin1600]

I don't want to misrepresent myself. I have always put in more time than everyone else that was training. If the standard training was twice a week I was there five, if people were at the dojo for 2 hours, I was there four hours. I will do more investigation into this, but something tells me that the brain is most efficient at learning a skill with XX hours repeated every day and that to double those hours a day would not shorten the time it takes to learn that skill.
But like was said the way the time is used is important.

 

[hoshin1600]

this HTML class. Value is http://www.bulletpro
Do we wish to debate music is different than MA?

 

[Tony Dismukes]

this HTML class. Value is http://www.bulletpro
Do we wish to debate music is different than MA?

I think your link is broken.

 

[hoshin1600]

Ok so Google as always has the answers, like I said in my first post. I looked at a few studies and sights. You can Google it yourself like I did.
"Optimal practice time to learn a skill"
The takeaway I got was...
Even for top world class performers across many topics,
Mindful "deliberate practice" was the key. Mindless practice was counter productive as it in grains bad habits. Mindful practice of one hour sessions totaling no more than 4 hours a day is best. The greatest benifits were gained in the first 20 minutes and would decline the longer practice was done.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

Ok so Google as always has the answers, like I said in my first post. I looked at a few studies and sights. You can Google it yourself like I did.
"Optimal practice time to learn a skill"
The takeaway I got was...
Even for top world class performers across many topics,
Mindful "deliberate practice" was the key. Mindless practice was counter productive as it in grains bad habits. Mindful practice of one hour sessions totaling no more than 4 hours a day is best. The greatest benifits were gained in the first 20 minutes and would decline the longer practice was done.

So if that is accurate (and I suspect there may be quite a bit of individual variation in play), then the optimum time spent training for the fastest possible progress in developing pure skill* would come out to about 28 hours of mindful practice per week. That's pretty close to the 30 hours I mentioned in my previous comment. Also, most people will run out of time in their schedule, willpower, or the ability to physically recover before they hit that level of training on a consistent basis.

*(additional training time could be spent on building physical conditioning, mental fortitude, or historical knowledge, but we're just talking about skill here.)

 

[hoshin1600]

From what I read the key is being Mindful which seems to me as having a purpose in training, stopping when somthing isn't right and correcting it. But it said this takes a lot of concentration and is hard to sustain, thus the one hour training session. Keep in mind that the four hours was for world class people in their field. Like top concert pianists and Olympian types. One sight stated 20 minutes a day is all the average person needs but this was a Forbes mag article and seemed be promoting his book.

 

[drop bear]

Bruce Lee was SO exceptional and SO singleminded over his learning, his preparation, his philosophy and his physical training I would wonder if OP is not only 'not for everybody' and but not for most people???

No you will still get results reflecting good training. You might even become special your self.

Hard work does go a long way towards being good.