10,000 Challenge

Knowledge is NOT skill.

Knowledge plus 10,000 times is skill.

We are about halfway through our 10 week, 10,000 repetition challenge and I am loving this challenge for so many reasons.

Every student this past week came to lesson knowing exactly what their practice spots are and was able to play each of them with ease. There wasn't necessarily nothing to improve on, but most spots were polished.

I could see the look of accomplishment on students faces who maybe struggled in the past with playing their practice spots in lesson.

Those who have always found repetitions in practice a breeze and are soaring through repetitions, have found other realizations in their practice.

From a teachers perspective, it has been incredible to not have to do the same practice spots week after week but to work on new material each week with my students. Instead of encouraging the right kind of practice and enough practice at home, I find myself praising every ones efforts, because there has been a shift in effort. Every student is flying through notes and skills and tricky passages. We have gained a new perspective on how to practice productively.

Productivity is the key here (rather than the amount of time practicing). From the few students who have done huge repetitions in a week, what they had to say about it was that it really didn't take that long.

When we can break our practice spots into small enough chunks, and focus just on those instead of run throughs, we can accomplish a whole lot in a short amount of time. Some weeks we may have bigger things to practice like gaining memory of a piece or adding in dynamics, but as long as we have new repertoire on the go or even polishing review pieces, we should never be limited by small spots to improve on. When we take a minute to play one small passage over and over, all of a sudden, we don't just know how to do it, we have mastered it - our knowledge has become skill.

As with so many Suzuki concepts, this concept that we are applying to our violin studies can be applied to any skill set we want to gain. When we can find the small steps in a given situation, we can take what is a new skill and make it manageable and fun, instead of overwhelming.

Keep up the amazing work and keep your repetitions going!