How long do you practice one technical exercise for per practice session?

[ready2shreddy]

A drum professor once told me to not go above 20 minutes otherwise you’re wasting your time and risking strain / injury. This is with very specific mechanical exercises, not thinking related exercises.

Thoughts?

[Prlgmnr]

Doing one thing for 5 minutes, then something else, then something else, then going back to the first thing, is better practice than doing each thing for 15 minutes straight.

It won’t FEEL better, it might feel like you’re struggling more at each exercise, that feeling is what makes it practise.

[lucashred86]

Hi, I think that we guitarists often focus on the wrong things, and drummers and piano players can be our best advisors 20 min Is perferct, I usually get bored after 5 min maybe due to my short attention span

[Brendan]

Yeah we learned a good bit about this in our interview with Noa Kageyama. You’ll hear this concept called “interleaved” or “random” practice. Good explanation here:

I summarized a few other practice tips from this interview here too! —

Learning methods on guitar?

Hey, great question! Here are a few tips on structuring practice, drawn from our notes on our interview with Noa Kageyama: There’s no universally optimal way to practice, as a lot depends on the individual and other variables. There are, however, several things you can try to help you optimize your practicing, including: Try structuring your practice as 3 sets of 3 (or 3 sets of 5) in a particular session, where each “unit” could be a chunk of just a few minutes on one particular passage or …

[PickingApprentice]

Random practice is cool, but it is really easy to forget to stop and move onto something else- when I make progress on a lick, I cant stop! My top tip is to buy a kitchen timer!!!

[ready2shreddy]

This is so helpful! Thanks @Brendan

[BurningAXE]

Ever since I watched the Noa interview and got to know his blog (I read everything he writes there) I use interleaved practice. In my particular case I practice in 25 minute sessions in which I switch between 2 or 3 exercises (e.g. A-B-A-B) for 5 minutes each. After that I take a short break - drink water, go to the bathroom, write a post in a forum , etc. Then I do another such session. I have found it counter-productive to practice for more than 1:30-2 hours. So after 3 or 4 sessions it’s better to switch to something else for a longer period.

What interleaved practice does is forcing you recall consciously the right movement instead of going on auto-pilot once you’ve figured it out. And recalling reinforces memorisation. As @PickingApprentice said - when you are in the heat of the moment you don’t want to stop so you have to force yourself. I use two different times on my computer simultaneously for the 25 and 5 minute sessions. As a bonus the 25 minute one blocks sites like Facebook to help you avoid distractions
On the other hand dividing a big session in small chunks helps people with short attention span like me I guess we can call it Practice Chunking