Poll: How do you schedule your practice

[dnovice]

Hey guys,

So the initial poll that was placed up on Monday somehow got deleted due to a forum system glitch. To Adriank and the guys that posted earlier. Thank you.

I am placing the poll up again because I believe this is beneficial to the forum, if not necessarily the veterans the newbies and the people that are interested in starting wing chun.

Anyways here it is:
1) How long a day do you practice?
2) How many days a week?
3) What advice would you give a newbie in regards to the above two questions?

[couch]

You should take these responses with a grain of salt, because once people start joining in and giving you some ideas, watch out! This thread will disintegrate into a dust similar to others.

I practice Wing Chun specifically two times per week. Both times about 1.5 hours.

Other times during the week (2-3 times), I'm working on conditioning, cardio, heavy bag, attribute training, etc.

My advice for a newbie in regards to training: you can ALWAYS train. You don't need to always move your body, however. I'm a busy guy, but I'm obsessed. I'm always thinking about Wing Chun, movements, defenses, tweaking things: all in my mind. Not only has science backed this up with tests, but I'm living proof. You can teach something to me and I'll have it mastered by the next week. The reason? I didn't just sit there and physically drill it. I thought about it...almost meditated on it!

Hope this helps. And above all, enjoy what you're doing.

[stonecrusher69]

The simple answer train when ever you can. If you have only 3 hrs a week do that if you have much more time even better. The quality of the training time is much more important then hrs spent on poor training.

[anerlich]

I'm what some on the forum would call a Glorified Kickboxer so I don't practise Wing Chun exclusively.

I do five structured classes a week at two academies. I may end up teaching one or two of these classes, especially since my instructor has had a pretty tough training goal of his own of late and we have tried to assist him in that.

I probably roll or spar for another 60-90 monutes a week on top of that, not so much lately as I had knee surgery at the end of last Jan. I try to stretch and mobilise regularly, including PNF and yoga, run 5-6 K's once or twice a week, and work out with kettlebells 3 days. I use a Pavel-style approach ot kettlebells (fairly heavy wegihts, low reps, lots of sets always with good form never to failure) which means I am usually still fresh and not pushing injury. I might do forms, other cardio drills like burpees or stair running, and work BJJ and other ground movement drills solo or with a heavy bag every now and then just for variety.

It sounds like a lot but it's not really.

The classic beginner mistake is to go crazy and attend every possible class. Burnout is inevitable. Better IMO to start maybe twice a week then add classes gradually if you can fit them in. You should be keen for more rather than dreading dragging yourself to another class or ognoring other aspects of your life to do so.

A lot of guys beat themselves up or quit because they can't train more than once or twice a week. Once a week is better than not at all. Even once a month is better than nothing.

Don't worry about how you are progressing compared to your classmates. There will be people with more natural talent and more spare time than you. Most of the really good guys I know did not start with special talents. A lot of the really talented guys got bored and moved on to the next physical pursuit they could rapidly excel at.

Half the battle is just showing up at class. Maybe even more than half.

[couch]

I'm what some on the forum would call a Glorified Kickboxer so I don't practise Wing Chun exclusively.

I'm going to start a new thread about this... please respond. ;)

[anerlich]

I'm going to start a new thread about this... please respond.

I already have - the subject is one of considerable interest to me.:cool:

[dnovice]

Hey guys,

I want to thank you all for taking part in the poll. There were a few more responses but those were lost when the post was deleted (along with others on the forum) due to some system glitches. Thank you to those guys too.


We all seem to have very different training regimes and this is not surprising since we are all different, with different quantities of free time.

However, there is one thing that every has agreed on that is "Practice when you can." In other words it doesn't matter if you only practice 3 hours a week if thats what you have so long as you practice.

----------------------
For me:
I practice every morning, except for saturday, for about an hour and a half to close to two hours. I simply do my forms and then practice techniques in the air since I don't have a wooden dummy.

My main objective with practicing is to be consistent. I believe that so long as I keep to my aloted schedule I'll get better even if its slowly...

Cheers.