Silly and Sally demonstrated the importance of practice. As skilled as Silly was she still needed to practice to make sure she knew all her techniques. Without that practice she would miss the details of some of her techniques and outright forget other techniques entirely. Once she started practicing she remembered all of her techniques and most of the little details. But Silly fell back into complacency. 

Don’t get me wrong, she still practiced a little bit every day, but instead of practicing deliberately with focusing on her scripts and good strong technique she started to rush through everything. She went from practicing 20 to 30 minutes a day to 5 quick minutes zipping through all of her techniques.

She developed lazy habits like poor stances, sloppy kicks, and her hands not being in their ready positions. When she sparred it was hard for her to score points. When she practiced her self defence with partners she felt weak and began to think her techniques were ineffective.

They were ineffective, but not because the techniques were bad, but because of how little effort she put behind them. Her practice times didn’t decrease because she was getting faster, they decreased because she wasn’t focusing on the full techniques, she started rushing through her scripts or just stopped saying them at all. She wasn’t putting any Power, Energy, Speed, or Snap into her techniques. All of this led to her making silly mistakes again. 

What are some things that Silly can do when she’s practicing to get the most out of her practice time?

1. Pay attention to the scripts! Don’t just say them because you were told, listen to the words that you’re saying. Make sure your practice matches the scripts.
2. Do a double check! Focus on one technique or a group of techniques and make sure that your starting points and end points and everything in between is correct. Which hand goes up? When one hand goes up the other goes down. Are you in a good stance? Is your ready hand in position? When you kicked did you chamber your leg? Was it a tight chamber or a loose chamber? Did you let your foot flop like a fish or was it positioned for the kick you were practicing?
3. Practice with Power, Energy, Speed, and Snap. 
   1. Try practicing your techniques making them as strong as you can. 
   2. Practice each technique with a loud Kiahp! 
   3. Practice your techniques as fast as you can.
   4. Practice each technique and then freeze it, like you’re posing for a picture.