Too Much Variety?

The rings at home are great, although I hardly have any padding underneath and am reluctant to try certain moves! Have the opportuniy to take an adult gymnastics class at the largest best equipped facility in the area. Figure I could more easily work on my handstand, some basic tumbling, PB, horse maybe.

However, I also recently started to get some very reasonably priced OLY sessions in order to get my power clean and OH squat in order. As well my shoulder and T-spine mobility leaves a lot to be desired and working on it should crossover to gymnastics, as you guys have pointed out.

I figure I could handle 2 sessions per week of each (including training) but for skill aquisition would it be enough of either to progress or is it better to focus on 1 or the other? No matter what, certain moves I would only be able to do in the gymnastics facility, so could only be practiced once per week regardless ....

In terms of recovery I normally need 48 hours from heavy sessions, although these should not be all that heavy...

I prefer the variety, all other things being equal.

See my posts in this thread about adult gym classed:

You might find them somewhat frustrating, but I'd say they're worth a shot. You will only have a limit ability to work on things you want to, and in ways you want to - so it can be best to empty your cup before submitting to their coaching. Within reason.

As to your main question, whether it will be "too much" training and too varied, well it's hard to say - you know better than any of us do

I personally struggle to recover from one gym session, two 30-minute lifting workouts and two or three handbalancing workouts per week. That's really my limit and I'm pushing it right now.

You will likely manage to improve your skills with only one session per week, even, but it will be slower. I always feel like I need much more than a handful of attempts each week with my new gym skills.

Checked out the link - thanks.

Recovery wise I should be ok - I've been working out 5 days a week on average for several years, strength and cardio. Believe me, having good cardio helps recovery by not getting easily winded to begin with.

Gaining strength takes time - though I know I will never be able to do certain things no matter how much time!

Learning physical skills though, I really want to get better at. It takes too long. There's a saying about it taking like 10K repetitions until a new skill is burned into the brain. That's a lot of reps! I'm sure there are ways to improve the quality and hence speed of the learning, no?

So yes, I agree it would take longer with less practice time.

How many disparate physical skills can one effectively learn at once, and how does one determine this - I wonder!

FutureisNow said:

Learning physical skills though, I really want to get better at. It takes too long. There's a saying about it taking like 10K repetitions until a new skill is burned into the brain. That's a lot of reps!

I've heard such things, but it's a number plucked out of thin air, I'm sure. While the number is obviously arbitrary and meant to represent "a lot", I think the crux of the sentence is the concept of a "new skill".

I expect we've all gone from 0% success at something (to a given standard) to 95-99% success (to a given standard) with only a few dozen repetitions, especially if it's a skill within a category we're already familiar with. But to get to that standard from scratch, with no experience in the category, may take much longer.

That's actually an important point - and it ties in with the same idea concerning your strength (Sommer speaks of it in BtGB as well). That at any given time you have a fundamental current strength level that improves quite slowly and can only be encouraged along at its own speed, and when taking up a new movement, position or lift of some kind you will likely experience rapid improvement until it meets your current strength level, at which point it will stall and progress on that lift will return to being very slow.

It's the same with skills, I believe - or it is with everything I've learned so far. Let's say you've got a musician of level 50 skill (arbitrary units), and he learns a brand new piece of music which requires roughly 40 skill units to play to a good standard. He should be able to pick that up in no time at all, maybe right there and then the very first time he tries it. No 10,000 repetitions needed.

But in his career so far, of course, to attain that base level of skill, there was a massive investment of time and training (and talent), which is the supposed "10,000 times" thing.

There's that little story about the famous artist at a restaurant, do you remember?

I'm sure there are ways to improve the quality and hence speed of the learning, no?

Of course. Quality of practice is vital and often overlooked in the mad rush to clock up many hours of training. That's the true difficulty in training - staying mentally focussed and clever about what you're doing, instead of relaxing into the easier approach of mindlessly cranking out more of the same training that doesn't even benefit you. I suspect that many people who do eventually get kind of good at something could have gone so much further if they were more efficient in their training.

Way back at school I remember among my friends there developed the concept of this effort:achievement ratio, and that actually having a very low value for it (i.e. high achievement for low effort) was absolutely desirable. I've tried to respect that since, but it's much easier for things you don't particularly enjoy doing (like studying!). For things that are really enjoyable, like certain forms of exercise, the temptation to do more than is needed, simply *too much*, in fact, is always hard to resist.

I think the simplest thing to point out to people - though many refuse to believe it - is that we never learn something by repeatedly doing it wrong, by repeatedly failing at it. Anyone who's been around this site and some others with a good attitude towards training will surely agree that instead we learn by doing lesser, smaller or simplified things right, and building up from there. The former approach is akin to repeatedly dumping a huge pile of bricks onto the ground and hoping that one time they'll happen to fall into the shape of a house. Nice idea, but in reality the builders who start with one brick, then two, then a third... will get their house built sooner.

I know you already know that, but it bears mentioning in this conversation.

So yes, I agree it would take longer with less practice time.

How many disparate physical skills can one effectively learn at once, and how does one determine this - I wonder!

Interesting issue. I wonder if skills being far apart is beneficial (less overlap to confuse your brain/body when learning, and deplete the same resources?) or being close together is better, so they can build on each other?

I suspect there's a benefit at each end, and a middle ground where they're close enough to interfere but too far to benefit each other. Just a guess, though.

emos said:

I've heard such things, but it's a number plucked out of thin air, I'm sure

Actually that number has some basis in research, but it pertains to skill acquisition.

Anders Ericsson along with others developed the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, which describes what he called "deliberate practice". From The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle: Its central tenet is a Gibraltar-like statistic: every expert in every field is the result of around ten thousand hours of committed practice.

That's not to say that strength gains cannot be had with much shorter development time; I think he is referring to ingrained skills (motor memory in the case of gymnastics).

Excellent response emos. You make many good points, and really discuss it in a thoughtful manner.

Thanks much.

I like your description of the 40-50 skill point learning aquisition, as it makes intutive sense.

With physical skills I've perhaps been able to get around the 60 (mid intermediate) mark in general. After a point, I find it tedious and the effort exceeding the reward. I've been trying to increase my appreciation for the finer points, and find satisfaction in acheiving those as well as the gross physical movement. Perhhaps

will be able to get to the 70 level. But yes, it seems that one's general pattern of skill aquisition carries over

from one skill to another, and that ones general level seems to be a sticking point. Some of that may be determined by ones innate capacities.

Could say more. Gotta get going now...

Cheers!

PaulR said:

Actually that number has some basis in research, but it pertains to skill acquisition.

Anders Ericsson along with others developed the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, which describes what he called "deliberate practice". From The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle: Its central tenet is a Gibraltar-like statistic: every expert in every field is the result of around ten thousand hours of committed practice.

That's not to say that strength gains cannot be had with much shorter development time; I think he is referring to ingrained skills (motor memory in the case of gymnastics).

Yea, I've actually read a bit about it and found it fairly wishy-washy.

10,000 hours is about 45 minutes per day for 20 years, or 90 minutes per day for 10 years, say, which isn't very much and is without a doubt not far off from how much many people engage in certain activities they enjoy. A tiny minority of whom may go on to become "experts", which in many fields (non-directly-competitive ones, I suppose) is largely a subjective and social concept rather than indicative of a quantifiable level of ability. More a matter of becoming "popular", perhaps - which itself takes a massive amount of work, for sure, but isn't entirely about gaining technical ability.

I don't think it has much relevance to our small-scale gymnastics or other physical skills that we here may be trying to learn.

As an aside, I appreciate the use of the term "deliberate practice", I must say - as one of the things that bothers me is a blunt appreciation of practice/training without regard for its quality or content.