One common educational finding is that spaced practice is more effective than massed practice. In other words, it is more effective to learn something by learning it during 6 different sessions for 10 minutes each than to try to learn it in a single one hour session. See this link for a meta-analysis of the research on massed practice:
http://kinesiology.unlv.edu/classes/KIN750/meta.pdf
The implications on learning kayaking skills is that it is better to have more shorter practices than to have fewer longer practices. Much of the learning actually occurs between practices, not during the practice. So, it's more important to keep coming back to skills rather than just hammering at them for a long period of time during one session.
I often organize practice sessions by teaching a skill, having the athletes practice it, then moving on to the next skill, sometimes before the athletes have mastered the skill, but before they have had time to be bored by it. I know I will come back to the skill in future sessions and the athletes will learn a lot more by doing more skills in a session that by just concentrating on one or two skills. By organizing practices this way, we can touch on skills more frequently instead of practicing a skill only once a month or so.
I know that some people don't like this approach. Perfectionists feel that you have to perfect one skill before you move on to something else. I don't look for perfection, but just aim for some progress. And it is not interesting for those who already know a skill to spend 30 minutes working on it. But if they only spend 5 minutes reviewing something they already know, it is actually a worthwhile exercise in reminding themselves how to perform the skill.
In most groups, you have some more advanced students and some who take longer to learn something. Moving quickly through skills rather than dwelling on them and then coming back to the skill again at a later date is a good compromise to keep things interesting and to review and re-teach the skill at a later date.
Another implication of spaced practice is that two workouts a day is better than one. There is a concern about overtraining when doing two workouts per day. However, if you are really only doing one workout that is split into 2 sessions, then it will be an advantage.
For example, rather than doing a full length workout of 6 full length runs, do 2 workouts of 3 runs each. If you do 3 runs on one course in the morning and 3 runs on a different course in the afternoon, then you have the opportunity to learn 2 courses, yet do the same amount of training.
This is a good approach when you are in a situation like when you are traveling the race circuit and have time between races with little else to do but train. Be careful not to do more total work during the two sessions or you may end up overtraining. Particularly if it is right before a race, you should be lowering your total training volume (tapering), rather than increasing your total training volume. So, if it is in the week before a race, you could just do 2 full length runs in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. You have the quality and practice on the race course doing 2 different courses, but you have the lower volume so you will perform at your best on race day.
Another situation where the spaced practice concept is useful is in deciding how to use your resources for training and racing. Should you take a month off in the summer to train full-time and have to work 2 jobs all year to pay for it, or should you work part-time so you can train more year-round at home? The spaced practice concept would argue more for the year-round consistent training schedule rather than a less intense schedule followed by a month of full-time training. But if you can't get quality training at your home site (for example, if there is no whitewater, only flatwater), that could also be a factor in your decision. What are your thoughts on this?
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