Hey how many times a week do you all work out per average? If you can only make it to a class once a week is that enough to learn to effectively learn to defend/fight?
phillyman,
In his new book, JJ Machado says it takes around 2 years of practice,going to class three times per week, before you really begin to understand jiu-jitsu.
While I mean no disrespect to the established authorities on learning to fight, I don't think you need to spent 3 classes a week to get good with something.
Although, with any type of combat that has most of it's development geared towards partner work (like jiu-jitsu), then yes 3 classes should be a MINIMUM.
But for all the other types of development, like physical conditioning, and single-person technique training (bag work, or whatever you want to call it), I don't think you need to be there, if you can't help it that is. If you can, then always go to class, you'll usually pick up things you simply don't know on your own.
On the other hand, someone who relies too much on what they learnin class might forget how to learn on their own, independant of the opinions of their potentially biased instructors.
The solution of course is to train 3+ times a week at class, and train 3+ times a week on your own, both practicing what you learned in class, and analyzing it/discovering new things yourself.
Just my opinion. I don't get to class 3 times a week so I'm forced to focus a lot of energy on my own self-directed development. The only downside to that is that a person rarely can know enough as a highly experienced instructor, so...as I said, a balance of both classtime and home-time is a good thing.
most people on this forum probably train 5-6 days a week, and alot of them teach. Most would feel something missing from life only training 1 day a week. At least that's how I feel about it.
1 day training is better than no days training. If you can't make it to class more than once a week, you should set aside at least another day to review what you did in class. Combine this with some physical conditioning as well.
make sure you take notes during or after class. This way you don't have to waste time relearning what you did the previous week. I wish I took notes in martial arts all my life, I have only been taking notes the last few years. But it does help, I can open up my book and find out exactly what warmups and techniques/drills were used in a BJJ class 3 years ago. This way I can always go back and review it and maybe realize something that I didn't understand at the time.
Good luck.
phillyman,
Being a time starved person such as yourself I'd like to offer a quote from my coach Tony Blauer, "Never let math beat you."
You can defend yourself now. The more time you spend training properly the better you will get at defending yourself but don't limit yourself by saying, "I can't defend myself until I train for 2 years or I'm a blue belt or blah blah blah". This is not a license to 'not' train. It's a warning to not make excuses for failure. Work 100% with what you've got.
Tony often told me that if you spend 60 seconds of every minute training and you will surpass people who 'coast' through, just doing their favorite stuff over and over again. Find your weakness and work on them until they become strengths.
There have been great suggestions here about taking notes, reviewing videos, cross-training, etc. You just need to make progress a priority and do the work.
Matt Thornton has an excellent blueprint for training effectively and efficiently if you need some help getting started.
Hope that helps,
Phil