One thing that so many teachers forget to teach their students is how to learn. Kind of the first thing they should teach really eh!! [IMG]http://www.fightingarts.com/forums/ubb/biggrin.gif[/IMG]
When I began martial arts I read HEAPS of books, and tried to use them to help me learn bits that my teacher would miss, or to jog my memory about things I had learnt in class. Great to use as an aid, but terrible to use solely as a teacher. I found that one of my best training tools for learning new techniques was a mirror. You spend all night at class watching your instructor doing things, then you go home and compare what you're doing to what you saw them do. If you come home and only remember one technique from class, thats fine! Practice it on both sides until you think it looks like your instructors technique. Once you have it feeling and looking good, start experimenting gradually with speed and varied heights and footwork. If you take each technique through this careful step by step way of practicing them you will get a lot better at them than if you just go flat out straight away.
When you start to get several techniques feeling good, try combining them in different orders. Get used to throwing kicks and punches from both sides in groups of 3 or more techniques, then when you spar you wont tangle yourself up if you try to hit someone more than once.
Finally, you can easily train yourself in strength flexibilty and fitness if you think you need more training in these areas than just class time. Ask your instructor for some useful stretches, and for tips on how many pressups, situps etc you should be aiming for. Any sane instructor will do backflips at a student ASKING for extra things to do in their own time, so dont feel like you're being annoying.
I hope you can pick something useful from all that mumbling. Best of luck with your training, train hard and have fun [IMG]http://www.fightingarts.com/forums/ubb/biggrin.gif[/IMG]
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