It depends how fast a person can adapt to learning the specific techniques. For some it will take long and others fast to learn a cartain technique. Also for learning techniques, its a good idea to practice with a partner,alot faster learning that way.

This is very easy to answer:
Practice doesn't make perfect.
Perfect practice makes perfect.

Of course, depends on the student blah blah blah.....

Jim Mather (old geezers like myself may remember him from the show "That's Incredible!", where he used to catch/break arrows shot at him on TV!) has said that it takes something on the order of 100 reps just to acheive "muscle memory", probably around 10,000 to become very proficient and 50,000+ to become world class.

This was from an article in Black Belt magazine from the mid 80's. I may not be totally accurate with the numbers, but it was around there.

I did say "world class".....meaning in the very top echelon of competition.
Oddly enough, I am trying to remember if he said 50,000 or 250,000 reps for world class.

It was a lot. Am I the only one who knows who Jim Mather is?

15-20 reps a day, 300 days a year for 10 years is roughly 50,000. Practice more, get there faster. I personally noted that I was much better after 10 years than I was when I started!

I cant remember where I read this, but it stated olympic level athletes have gone through the movements approximately 250,000 times before reaching that level.. how they figured that out, no idea.

What do you consider 'mastered' i know maths is off the subject, but how many times do you have to apply a maths rule before you can do it whenever you want? i think it depends on the individual... but if you want a scientific veiw point, do be able to apply a technique on demand, you must pracise the movement untill it has become a reflex action, refered to as Muscle memory retention, or the ability of the brain to instictively do something because it has been done so many times before.. eg. swing legs out of bed, stand up, start walking. because you have done it so many times, it comes naturally. But, this would depend on what you consider mastering something. having a complete understanding of how, when, where and why to apply a technique, plus the abilty to do this could also be called 'mastering' a technique.

A website with a forumla, says to do something 10,000 times, and gives you a chart of how long it will take you. Don't know how true the 10,000 times part is, but puts things into perspective.

http://www2.micro-net.com/~dlmurray/howmuch.html

Great link, Joel.

How about this?

Practice doesn't make Perfect.

Even Perfect Practice doesn't make Perfect.

Perfect Practice just makes you Better.

Better is what you want to be.

Practice something 100, 1000, 10,000 or 1,000,000 times in a static environment. It might appear perfect in that environment. Until it is perfectly integrated and can be done perfectly under the worst of conditions, it is far from perfect.

Worry less about perfection and more about making it work.

i'm not sure. i would say, that if the technic is very simple than it wouldn't take as many times to make it work good in self defence. as for how many times it takes to master a technic i have no idea, and one of my reasons for this is i don't understand peoples terms such as master, perfect or things like that, i don't believe a move can really ever be perfect or mastered. i'm not sure what standards they use to tell when it's mastered so i'm not sure. i don't know if they tell by how well you use it in a fight or just by how much power and technic is behide it i'm just not sure at all. but i would never say something could be mastered because something can always be improved even if it means by substracting something. but i also would like to know how many times they say you have to do something before it's mastered. and also i'm sorry i couldn't be of much help for this subject.

Reminds me of that tootsie roll pop commercial.

How many times must you do a technique before it's mastered?? Let's ask Mr.Owl.

One, Twohoo, Three, CRUNCH... The world may never know

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