How Often Should I Practice?

“There is more than one way to skin a cat”

Seriously, who is skinning cats?! And why are they doing it so often that we need a saying for it?!

As we discussed in the last post ‘A Balanced Approach To Practicing’, there are many ways to develop into a proficient drummer. However, the common denominator is TIME. There is no hack, fast-track or way around it.

The goal should be to play EVERY DAY. Whether that’s 5 minutes or 2 hours.

Developing coordination and limb-independence requires our brain to develop new neural pathways. Those new pathways are delicate and need repetition to develop. It goes without saying then, the longer we go without practicing, the more those pathways fade.

It can be challenging to get to the kit everyday. Sometimes, you’re too busy. Sometimes you just aren’t feeling it - on those days, just go sit at the kit and putter around a little. You’ll be surprised how often your mood changes and next thing you know, a half hour has passed. Even if you don’t succeed at playing every day (you won’t), your development will begin to compound and you’ll soon be surprising yourself and others by playing things that recently seemed out of reach.

That is when what I call the ‘Cycle of Progress’ begins - the better I get, the more fun drumming becomes, the more I want to practice, and so on…

Now that we have laid out what to practice (last weeks post) and how often we should practice, next week we will be diving into some specific exercises and concepts that I have been using with students over the past 20 years!

*No cats were harmed in the making of this post