How many days/hours a day do you practice?

[RonC]

My 11 year old son practices 5 days a week and 2 to 3 hours a day.

That's not including all the time he is at home jumping around and doing spins! The kid never stops.

[misskarne]

I usually practice four days a week, 1.5 hours a day. I'm Aussie Skate Free Skate 3 level, working on 4 (loop, flip, lutz, camel and change-foot spins).

Usually being the operative word...I just had six weeks off with a knee injury, and after only a week of being back on, I tripped on my toepick and sprained my shoulder!

I hope your son is more co-ordinated than me.

[AndyWarhol]

Currently, I am skating 3 days a week, 45 minutes at a time. I don't think 45 minutes is enough, but unfortunately, its the length of the sessions at my rink, and paying for a double session is too pricey. Ill be increasing to 4.5 times a week in a month or so, after i get a few expenses out of the way (im moving house).

On top of that, I do go to the gym 4 times a week as well, for about 1.5 hours at a time.

[Jozet]

I'm a beginner skater (Basic 6), and if I can get on the ice three times a week, I improve. My long term goal is to pass Pre-Bronze moves.

Skater Grrrl skates about 15 hours a week. Just cut music for both her programs, so she'll up to about 19-20 hours soon. May is first Intermediate competition.

[Skittl1321]

I have 3 thirty-minute lessons a week, two are groups, one is private.

I practice on my own for 1.5 hrs a week. I'd like to do more, but the ice time just isn't available to me. I can't skate more than an hour at a time due to a myraid of injuries- ankles, hips, knees...

I am working on my adult Bronze free skate test- so I can do waltz jump, toe loop, salchow and I pretend to do a loop. I can do scratch spin, sit spin, backspin, and am beginning to work on back sit and camel.

[RonC]

I usually practice four days a week, 1.5 hours a day. I'm Aussie Skate Free Skate 3 level, working on 4 (loop, flip, lutz, camel and change-foot spins).

Usually being the operative word...I just had six weeks off with a knee injury, and after only a week of being back on, I tripped on my toepick and sprained my shoulder!

I hope your son is more co-ordinated than me.

Sorry to hear you hurt yourself! My son is working on level 4 as well.

Hope your better soon.

[GarrAarghHrumph]

I skate between 2-4 times per week, for about 45 minutes each. Sometimes a bit longer, if the session is longer and I have the time. I find that I advance more quickly if I skate more often but for less time, rather than spending 2-3 hours on the ice in any one session.

[Jozet]

I find that I advance more quickly if I skate more often but for less time, rather than spending 2-3 hours on the ice in any one session.

I see this with myself and with my kiddo. For the first time in forever, I skated a morning session and then an evening session. I was completely amazed at how much better I felt on the ice that second session.

I know that with Other Life and time/money constraints, sometimes a 2-3 hour session is inevitable. But generally, is there any rule of thumb or tried-and-true wisdom for skaters of different levels and when too much is too much in one session? I had heard once that a best case scenario for a competitive freestyle skater would be three 45-minute sessions a day, with time to let muscles relax between and then warm-up again.

With a three hour session, I'm guessing there are some built in breaks if not a complete cool down and warm up? Pacing via perhaps a warm-up, and then altering jumps/spins/footwork? Also, for different types of skating, I'm guessing the practice schedule would look different.

[GarrAarghHrumph]

For me, whenever I get to the point in the session and I say to myself, I'm tired, but I'll just do one more... That's usually when I injure myself. So I've learned over time that THAT is the time to stop.

I know that Michael Weiss also found that doing more, shorter sessions worked better for him. He talked about it in some interviews, as I remember it.

The elite level skaters at my rink do seem to do several sessions per day, with each session being about an hour or so. The sessions vary - one may be jumping/run throughs, another footwork, another choreo and fine detail work, etc. And they do off-ice work between sessions as well. So even if they're at the rink for several hours, they do vary their work during that time.

[gkelly]

I know that with Other Life and time/money constraints, sometimes a 2-3 hour session is inevitable. But generally, is there any rule of thumb or tried-and-true wisdom for skaters of different levels and when too much is too much in one session?

I think it has less to do with skill level than with age and fitness level.

However, competitive skaters at higher skill levels need to train more hours to maintain all their skills, whereas lower-level or noncompetitive skaters don't have as many skills to maintain.

When I was a teenager I could skate up to 6 hours a day, half of it patch sessions.

In my 30s and early 40s, a 90-minute session (or two 45-min sessions in a row) was perfect.

More recently, I've found that after about 65 minutes I'm more likely to get little injuries from skating when my muscles are too tired, so I prefer to do just 1 hour at a time, or if that's not feasible than 45 min at a time.

My skill level hasn't changed significantly over that time. If anything my basic skating is better than when I was a teenager, but I don't do as many jumps.

[Aussie Willy]

Get to the rink whenever I can. Which at the moment is probably every second week. Just too busy.

[ltnskater]

I see this with myself and with my kiddo. For the first time in forever, I skated a morning session and then an evening session. I was completely amazed at how much better I felt on the ice that second session.

I know that with Other Life and time/money constraints, sometimes a 2-3 hour session is inevitable. But generally, is there any rule of thumb or tried-and-true wisdom for skaters of different levels and when too much is too much in one session? I had heard once that a best case scenario for a competitive freestyle skater would be three 45-minute sessions a day, with time to let muscles relax between and then warm-up again.

With a three hour session, I'm guessing there are some built in breaks if not a complete cool down and warm up? Pacing via perhaps a warm-up, and then altering jumps/spins/footwork? Also, for different types of skating, I'm guessing the practice schedule would look different.

Ideally, perhaps, but I would hate that (because I simply hate retying skates), so for me, it would be 2 back to back sessions, an hour break (or 2 hours), and another session

During the summer, I skated approx. 8 hours a week (o wow that was very little, now that I think about it), and now during the year although my season is done, I did skate just under 7 hours a week on ice, it's hard to balance with school. Now, it's going to be whittled down to around an hour and a half or so.

[AndyWarhol]

i would hate hanging around the rink cooling down, and warming up. id prefer to do a few hours in the morning, and a few hours at night. thats what i used to do back in the day.

[Jozet]

Yeah, I agree...that kind of schedule would suggest a LOT of free time to skate, or a day spent not far from the rink.

[jjane45]

This page lists a formula that recommends practicing an hour for every revolution of each jump type, so a skater working on 2S would practice (salchow 2, axel 1.5, lutz 1, flip 1, loop 1, toe loop 1) a total of 7.5 hours a week. Rough guide line, YMMV.

The page above also links to an interesting page, Timing of Skill ( = jumps) Acquisition. I wonder if it indeed applies to youth skaters on average?