Home Training vs Dojo training

Not everyone has a tone of extra time to work out at home, and not everyone can make it to the Dojo every day to train. This means you need to strike a balance in your training. The one thing I notice the most when talking to others about their home work outs and their thoughts on Dojo work outs is that a few of them have drastically different ideas of what they should be all about.

Home work, or home work outs should be working on conditioning and working no the lessons that Sensei has presented in class so he does not have to go back over it again and again with students unless it’s a new aspect or correction of a technique.

The training at home should be right out of the book…the note book you bring to class. Instructors teach a class with a specific idea and or fundamental in mind, be it rotation, movements, a specific Kata or particular techniques that needs work. They then teach a class and focus on that idea or fundamental and hope that students take that lesson home and work on it or stick about after class and work on it.

Literally take the lessons that Sensei has taught in class that week and go over them in your living room, basement or hallways as best you can. Try and figure out what the main idea of class was and push yourself to perform the class focus as much as you can. This way when you go back to class, assuming you have done your work and progressed, you can get a new lesson to work on and try to perfect.

Class time is all about new things, if done right. If the students are not moving ahead and doing their home work then it is about rehashing the old class and pushing your class to actually do the home work…in class time. Going back over old ideas that should have been mastered already and trying to build on skills that we have already gone over in class. However, when a student or whole class does do their home work, the sword starts to show its edge. The class progresses and builds on itself and soon enough the information that Sensei is handing out is worked on by the students to the point that he moves on to more advanced things.

Right after class sit down and write out notes on the class. Try and stick to what you did and not what you think the point was. Write out: Warm up (H 1-5), Kihon: Sanbon zuki, Ippon kumite Sanbon Kumite…ext. Once you have written it out go home and try to just put facts down, unless Sensei says “we are working on timing tonight” or “we need to focus on hip vibration at the end of Oi-zuki” or something specific like that.

Once you are at home go back over your notes. Read them and if Sensei did not spend a lot of time on something don’t worry about it, try and find out the theme of the night. Write notes on your notes to give you something personal to go on and then incorporate those notes and Sensei’s lessons into your home work outs. The home work out is time to really polish up and focus on the lessons that Sensei has given out thru the week.

Home training gives you the opportunity to train on your own and work on your own weaknesses as well. If you know you have a weak side kick and want to improve it you can throw that in to the mix, or if you are very inflexible it gives you extra stretching time to work on that hurdle. Karate is not about being a top athlete its about challenging your own hurdles and overcoming them. Its about working at home and the club to be a bit better than you were before…all the time.

Home training can not be the “staple” of your training however. It has some specific draw backs that one has to keep in mind. No instructor to correct you is a big one. We see a lot of self taught people with massive flaws in their techniques, and they expect them to be fantastic because they do those THOUSANDS of times…but doing it a thousand times wrong just makes it more ingrained in you…wrong!

The other drawback is you are very limited in what you can do by yourself. You cannot do impact training, sparring or some conditioning exercises that may take a partner. At a dojo you have a partner to train with and test your techniques; you have a partner to hold the kicking pads or a instructor to work on your form with you. At home you just have yourself….and that can be good for Kata work and for some work, but you really are limited in what you can do at home…that is not to say that you should not work at home, it means that what you do at home…has to be done at the club with your instructor watching and a partner to test yourself against.

If you choose to skip on or the other you are selling yourself short and wasting your instructor’s time. If he has to go back over lessons and techniques over and over again he cannot get to the advanced information that he has for you. If you are not at class enough, you don’t get to progress along with others and eventually you will fall behind or find yourself working only on some items and not progressing the way you can!

The students that I have seen progress naturally, smoothly and to the level of physical and mental understanding do both training at home and at the club. Those that just train at the club have a decent grasp of what is expected of them, but tend to be…well they are not creative. They learn the book stuff and cannot make it their own. They become cookie cutter students that look like every other student, this is not bad…but they tend to simply do what they have seen. Those that train at home only and miss more classes than they should tend to be sloppy and stray way off the curriculum and miss growing in Karate as they flounder trying to work their way thru basics and correct issues and mistakes without the help of an instructor. Ego is often their worst enemy!

Back in the old days we used to say go to class four times or more a week, however I understand the issues of family and time constraints. I would say going two to three times a week is enough to advance to a good level in Karate, and then working out two to three times a week at home is a good number of times to work on weak points and focus on what you did in class. More is often better, but the minimum time for training in class would be a solid class a week with more home training.

As I got older and family started to demand more of my night time activities I changed my six days a week at the club and once a week at home for the opposite. I now go to class once a week to work on Kumite and spend five to six times a week at home pushing thru Kata and drills to try and keep the flames going. More class time would be better, but I have to deal with modern family needs and such.

The most important thing is to not let two days between training go by. Try and do some kind of training each day, even if its just some very basic drills like block and counter basics. Try and get to the club as often as you can and push to not let a week go buy without at least one class. And remember that training at home and at the Dojo should have different focuses and they serve different purposes and not one is better than the other, they both lead to the end goal of improvement and both are equally important.