The rushed practice session is a useful tool. It’s for when you have a limited amount of time to practice on a certain day. It can also be used for when you need to devote more time to your repertoire that day. It shouldn’t be used all the time, but can be used until a crisis is over.
This is the last in the series of the three kinds of practice sessions I do – regular, super fun, and rushed.
How the Rushed Practice Session is Set Up
The rushed practice session is pretty simple. It’s a five-minute warm-up followed by the things that you need to learn.
On the other hand, there are different things you can do based on your situation to help things along
Not Enough Time in the Day
When you have over-scheduled yourself and there’s not enough time in the day, just run through everything once. Don’t stress about it, just run through it. It’s the slow way around, but it works. Usually when you do this, whatever you’re working on usually includes a real warm-up. Therefore, you can skip the 5-minute warm-up.
This article will give you some more ideas on how to find more practice time in your day.
Crisis-Learning Repertoire
When you need to use your normally scheduled practice time to concentrate on repertoire, the rushed practice session is the ticket. This, in addition to the rushed practice sesion, also helps.
Too Much Repertoire
Sometimes you get bogged down with too much on your plate – a ton of gigs, recitals, competitions, etc. If you do a regular pracitice session, you might spend a longer time practicing than you should. What that means is that if you’re used to practicing for an hour and you have an hours’ worth of repertoire to practice, you should do the rushed practice session at least once a week. You don’t want to overwork your muscles and tendons.
Here are some more ideas for how to deal with that problem.
Lack of Motivation
Let’s say you’re forcing yourself to practice. This is one way to get yourself to do it. You promise yourself that it’ll be quick, so you just do a rushed practice session.
Here are some other ideas for how to help with motivation. Towards the end of this article, I talked about how to prevent a lack of motivation.
Conclusion
The rushed practice session is a great tool. It shouldn’t be overused, but it’s an option for when you find yourself in a bind.
Are there other situations where you find yourself needing to use this tool?