From: mikel@Apple.COM (Mikel Evins)
Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts
Subject: Re: Time required to attain Black Belt
Date: 9 Nov 92 18:50:39 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, CA

In article <1992Nov6.214657.3258@oracle.us.oracle.com> glo@dvlseq.us.oracle.com (George Lo) writes:
>I have the curiosity of how much time the martial art folks on the
>net practise, training in class and practise.
>I, myself, have classing training 3 times a week, 2 to 3 hours each
>time, and the 2 hours daily self-practise for the other 4 days. I
>think it is not that enough.

I start my days with a half hour of either I Chin Ching or Taijiquan,
depending on what part of my rotation I am in. At lunchtime I spend
about a half hour on rowing,stretching,  weights, and forms practice, 
to keep myself warmed up and limber. About 4:30 I head over to the
Shao-Lin Center, where I stay until between 7:30 and 10:00 PM, depending
on several factors (am I in a crunch period at work; am I scheduled
to teach that particular night, and so on). On Saturdays I arrive at
the Shao-Lin Center at 9am to begin working out. I stay until 2:30PM
unless we have scheduled extra specialty classes or individual
instruction time, in which case it runs to between 4 and 6:30,
depending. Once every three months or so I train with my instructor;
that's usually 30-40 hours spread over about three to four days.
I take Sundays off except for the morning wake-up practice.

That adds up to an average of something like 25 to 40 hours a
week, but that's probably overstating the case, since there are
fairly often days when I am unable to get to the school for
one reason or another, or when meetings at work and whatnot
interrupt my practice schedule. Also, the qulaity of the training
varies; we tend to alternate hard conditioning one month with
more relaxed training the next. That way we can really push
hard for a month, and then relax a bit the next to work on 
quickness and flexibility while we recover from the hard
workouts. This month happens to be a hard month; we are doing
weight vest conditioning, in which we work on a fairly rigorous
set of conditioning exercises while carrying 15% of our body
weight in a weight vest.

I think it would be possible to get in more practice if I
didn't have such a demanding and interesting job. There are
periods (like right now) when it's hard to make enough
practice time because I'm trying to get so much done at
work. On the other hand, I have to be at the school every
day because I'm one of the instructors, and that responsibility
helps keep me sane at work by compelling me to get out
and exercise.

My metric for measuring the rigor of my training is when
my instructor visits. He teaches full time, and so has
ample time for working out. He also holds master rank in
our system and so has been doing this for a long time. His
visits usually start with an easy evening of 2-4 hours, then a 
couple of long days of working out, 12-14 hours, and then end
up with a relatively short day, perhaps 6-8 hours, followed by
a trip up to Chinatown to prowl the shops and visit
old friends. I figure if I can absorb all the material in
the training sessions and still escort him around Chinatown
without feeling uncomfortably tired, then my training is
going pretty well. I used to think I'd never get to that 
point, but the last couple of training sessions have gone
very well for me.

By the way, you might enjoy a little 'in' joke that pertains
to a high level of activity. Our schools are called Chinese
Shao-Lin Center; Master Soard says 'Shao-Lin' *really* means
'hungry'.