How many times a week does England soccer captain David Beckham train?

David Beckham has to put in the hours if he wants to keep the skills...

Students occasionally come up to me and say, "Sensei, how often should I train?" I used to answer, "As often as you enjoy it." Now I realise that in my desire not to pressure them into more classes, I was selling those students short.

By asking me the question, they were either showing enthusiasm, or possibly expressing frustration and a desire to get more from their training. The honest truth is, you can enjoy training once a week, but you're probably not going to get the most from it.

GKR has recently conducted extensive research into student training frequency, and what grades they are, and do you know what? There's a direct link.

The average student trains just 0.9 times per week, (or 9 times in every 10 weeks to put it another way). However, the average brown belt trains 1.9 times per week! Now I know what you're thinking; "Does that mean I can't get my brown belt unless I train more than once a week?" Of course you can! Your sensei awards grades based upon merit, not how often you train. "Ahh," you think, "then that means that the twice a week people are suck-ups who get their grades for butt kissing?" No, no, no!!! How dare you suggest that. I'm shocked! ;-) But seriously, as senseis, we really do award belts based upon merit. It just so happens that most of the people who train more than once a week tend to merit greater rewards. I wonder why?
Well, if you look at this graph, you'll find out...

The DVD is very professionally designed

You can see that an increase in training frequency does not increase your ability in a linear fashion - it increases your ability exponentially! That's because of the way that your brain remembers things. If you do something once, unless it's very memorable like winning the Nobel Prize or falling off a building, your brain puts it into short term memory. Unless you have a reason to think about that event, it's unlikely to pass into long-term, or even medium-term memory. However, if you do something repeatedly, that's called re-enforcement. Each time you do it, it acts like a booster, refreshing your memory of it and increasing the importance of the event. You might not think that a punch is something important enough to put into long term memory, but if you do one a 1000 times, then it becomes important, and you're more likely to remember it.

But there's more to it than that. Your memory is like the paint on a house. It gradually fades and gets tatty. If you only repaint your house once every 50 years, you're going to need to put on a lot of paint to get it looking fresh and new again. However, if you repaint every year, it only needs a little work to get it back to showroom condition. Like the paint on a house, at first, you barely notice your memory fading, but the longer you leave it, the faster it goes downhill, and the more you forget. So if you refresh your memory often, not only do you forget less, but you add more and learn faster.

This is doubly true for so-called muscle memory. Muscle memory is the ability of your body to become accustomed to performing certain moves so that you no longer consciously have to think about them.

The honest truth is, people who train more often, don't just get better quicker; they get more out of it. They see a noticeable improvement in their abilities and knowledge, and this motivates them to work even harder. They enjoy it more, so they do more, which lets them enjoy it more, so they do more. It's the opposite of a vicious circle - a docile circle? A happy spiral?


Health benefits
Of course, lots of you didn't join to become good at karate - you joined because you wanted to lose some weight or become fitter. Well, I've got news for you too; once a week just isn't enough. Especially if you spend the rest of the week scoffing chocolate or lazing around in front of the TV!

If you join just about any gym, they'll recommend that you train three times per week if you want to see the benefits, and that's in an enironment where you spend most of your time focussed on fitness and burning off calories! The truth is, I've seen students lose weight training once a week, but I've seen others lose it far faster training more often...

Of course, your exercise also has to be done in conjunction with a sensible diet and a sensible life-style to get the best return from your effort.

Again, if you want to see the very best benefits, train more often.

So how often should you train? Well, there are lots of karate widows and widowers out there already wondering what happened to their partners, and we all have to spend time with our families or pets, and earn a living, so realistically, twice, maybe three times a week if you can spare it. If you can't, then at least put in a bit of practice at home to recharge the old memory cells.

If it's your kids we're talking about, well, wouldn't you sooner they spend three days a week in a karate class becoming better human beings, than one day in class and two in front of the telly picking up bad language and learning from poor role models?

One of my students, a 17 year old lad, was just coming up to brown belt, and he was a hard worker, but his stances needed attention. All of a sudden, his long forward stance improved dramatically, and over the course of no more than two months, he went from being a good student, to being a fantastic student. I couldn't understand why the sudden change so I asked him what was different? "Oh, I started training with Sensei Graham on a Sunday," he replied. At first I put it down to the fact that Sensei Graham must be a better teacher than me, but of course, that wasn't necessarily the case. It was just that the student was re-enforcing his learning, and developing better muscle memory and self-awareness.

This also raises another point; is it better to do a double class, or train on two separate days? For the very most enthusiastic students, GKR offers a discount on the second lesson if you do a 6.00-7.00 class, then the 7.30-9.00 lesson right away afterwards. This is a great way to train more, for less money, but I've seen a lot of students burn out by training this way. They get into the habit, but then the classes seem to drag as they get tired.

More importantly, for most effective re-inforcement, it's better to space the classes out fairly evenly. Otherwise, you still end up leaving a week between lessons, and forgetting a week's worth of stuff.

One of the global martial arts gorverning bodies once spent a lot of money on scientific research on the optimum amount of times to train, and they discovered that the best number of times to train was 3.5 times per week. That means that if you want to see the very, very maximum rate of improvement, maybe you'd better put in more classes. Of course, that's only for those elite students who aspire to earn their black belts in the shortest time, or become national or world champions, or exceptional senseis. If you want to train more than 3.5 times, that's fine, but you won't see any performance benefits - you'll just have more fun! For most people, try twice a week and see how you go from there.

As for David Beckham, I don't have a clue how often he trains in a week - but you can bet your last penny it's not zero point flipping nine!

*Graphs do not show actual rates of improvement, or weight loss, but are intended to be illustrative of the general principles.