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I am making relatively few posts, that is because as a newbie I feel that I need to spend a lot of time practicing.

I have spent over 15 hours this week practicing getting a coin into and out of classic palm, trying to look as natural as possible while using the hand with palmed coin for a multitude of tasks and finally keeping the coin balanced in hanging point on the tip of my index finger.

What are you practicing at the moment?

Well, Im practicing revising for exams, GCSEs and all. Oh, and getting a better card palm - and DL courtesy of Tenko.

I also feel that time practicing is irrelevant. You could spend 1500 hours practicing something and not get any better at it. I think it's all about technique. I reccomend more books, and the odd dvd.

Isn't there a tennis player who, after not managing a shot during training several times, would just stop, because he "didn't want to practice it wrong"?

There is perhaps a small amount of truth in that, but generally, hours put in = result. You rarely notice it during the practice, that's the thing. Over Christmas I started practicing the move for Greg Wilson's "boomerang card of death". Cards went everywhere, cards bent, my hands ached, and although I'd go through a few sweet spots I'd often end half an hour's practice with a sore thumb and feeling just as far away as ever. I'd practice altering the grip, changing the position of the thumb and the pressure etc, sometimes one way worked then the next minute it didn't...
But about a week ago I picked up the deck, and suddenly I was doing it. Not only that, but my hand felt pretty relaxed doing it. I could vary the height of the arc as the card spun out, and catch it 9 times out of 10. I'm now at about 7 out of 10 success rate at launching it from behind my back and catching it in front.

So I don't really believe in the "don't practice it wrong" thing. Your body is cleverer than you think, and you will be subconsciously picking up on all the times it doesn't go right, and the times it does, and what you're doing differently. But I expect mostly, your body is getting used to the movement, strengthening muscles and improving coordination, so that even if the end result during practice is far from perfect, you are actually one step closer each time. Then, when it all comes together, it will hopefully just "click."

I'm now practicing the windmill move by Lennart Green (as taught by Matthew J. Dowden on the excellent DVD "Party Animals"), and guess what? It's still feeling awkward every time...

when i was learning the guitar about twenty years ago, i'd even practice in the dark, with the electric guitar unplugged - just to practice my blues scales...

all practice is good...though, once you get a brain freeze...move onto something else or have a rest for a day....your subconcious WANTS to learn your habits...

I found if you practise and leave it for day you are a lot better the selight the next time you come to it.

Abraxus will understand when I say I am practising naughts and corsses at the moment.

I agree with you Farlsborough, you are subconsciously learning all the time.

I'm practicing the Windmill move aswell, learnt it from Derren Browns picturebook. I think it's a wonderfull move.

I think there are a few areas where "practising wrong" is indeed possible but I don't think you can get much wrong in practising, say, classic palming because either you get the coin into cp or not - you may use different fingers than other people or you cp position may be slightly more forward than that of others, so what? If you don't get your coin into cp at all, you don't continue practising in exactly the same way anyway but find a way of actually doing it, even if you have to practise slowly because the movement feels alien at first!
The real problem can be, as someone mentioned, that when practising for hours and hours you don't notice any improvement. But you're muscles learn nevertheless and when you try it the next day it has probably already improved. When I started practising muscle passes at first I didn't get anywhere, the coin just stayed put or maybe slowly turned over in my hand, so after a few days I gave up. Then not too long ago I was watching TV and cp-ing a coin and started practising again but it still didn't work. However, the next day the coin hopped around in my hand, maybe one try in 10, and I kept practising and again it didn't seem to improve but actually it did, just so slowly that I wasn't noticably better at it at the end of the "training session" (=film) than before. Furthermore, muscles get tired, so when practising for long, it rather seemed to get worse! But in the long run, it does get better, in particular because muscles learn even (or rather especially) after you've finished practising because often it's less the muscles themselves rather than the brain that gets trained to give the right stimuli. (I hope people proficient in medical disciplines can confirm that, i.e. that the brain learns over time after finishing practising something and that muscles also develop only after they've been trained)
Anyway, practice pays off, even if it doesn't look like it.

Im practicing a variation of the 'striking vanish', used for a certain Jay Sankey effect. Its easier to pick up than I though, but harder to get perfect lol

Darn. The stuff I'm practicing can't be done by myself...

My friend and I are both trying to hone our muscle reading skills. He's pretty good, but his presentation needs work. I'm planning on writing up a script of what I'm planning to use the MR for and posting it.

Does anyone have any good tips on picking people who are good senders without tipping the possibility of the ideomotor response (IE no pendulums)?

Farlsborough wrote:Isn't there a tennis player who, after not managing a shot during training several times, would just stop, because he "didn't want to practice it wrong"?

That is very true and it applies to everything. If you're doing something wrong and keep practicing it with that fault, you'll find that it's alot harder to get rid of the fault and it becomes kind of ingrained. You're better off taking it one step at a time until you've got it all right.

A while ago I'd been working on some moves for a couple of months, they looked great to me so I put them into an effect. I later videoed the effect and noticed a really obvious flash from the specs point of view. So even now I still have to really concentrate otherwise that fault creeps back in.