“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.”
-Dwayne Johnson
One of the things I like best about tricking is specifically that it is not like gymnastics. You are not working on the same thing that everyone does day in and day out. You are not on the exact same path your predecessors took. You choose what you want to work on and you get to use tricking as your creative outlet in addition to your physical outlet. You get to work on many many things. If one thing doesn’t work today, you get to train something else. Most importantly, you can explore beyond the beaten trail and pave your own path.
With all the benefits of freedom and variety we entertain, we unfortunately conflict with a principle underlying mastery and improvement. The 10,000 hour rule is based on the fact that the very best performers in many areas of study have spent around 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to get to that dominant position. Regardless of the actual number, the point is that in order to get better at something specific, you have to spend time working on it. But with tricking’s enormous diversity and each tricker’s personal preferences, a problem arises: If every session you work on whatever you want, or only what works, or just something fun, will any of the work you do in one session amount to anything?
I’m not here today to advocate any sort of training plan or regimen, but rather push forth an idea that the single most important factor for success in trick training is consistency. The idea is that it’s not what you do in a single session that ultimately matters, but what happens over weeks and months. Even if you spend an entire session dedicated to one trick, concept, or idea, you will only make the modest gains within a session. Many of the biggest breakthroughs come in an instant, but only after several weeks of working on the same concept. Using video game leveling as an analogy, you gain xp every time you are in a battle (working on a skill) but only level-up after you’ve accumulated the threshold amount of xp.
In order to improve, you must build upon that which you have built before.
Okay, so we discussed the idea of training one thing consistently. But what about all the fun in variety, the stuff you enjoy most about tricking? The benefit in consistency over weeks and months is that you need not spend the entire session on one thing. If you spend any part of each session working on a concept, you will see improvements over time. The rest of your session can be all the variety and play that you desire.
How you go about allocating time to your goals is up to you. You can use time or reps or any other strategy. Starting fresh helps a lot with bigger tricks. At the moment, I try to start each session (after warm-up) with 10 triples on trampoline or into a pit. Having a set number helps with the scarier skills. Then I move on to some swings for around 20 minutes. Switches or corks from any number of setups. For transition work, time is usually a better way measure to work. Here is an example of what the typical first half an hour of my session looks like:
After your “assignment” is done, you can work on anything you want. If after you finish, you still want to work on the same thing, great! Go for it! If you don’t, no sweat, you put in your work for the day and now you go do you, booboo. The caveat is that you can’t just do this once, you must be consistent in your work.
How many weeks should you spend on your “projects”? Really that’s up to you. If it’s something you really enjoy, or have a long-term goal for, you can work at it for several months. For me, 2 sessions a week for 6-8 weeks is a long enough cycle to make some serious headway without getting burnt out.
The last thing to consider when working on these longer time frames is that a lot of the things that we are working on take time. There will be constant ups and downs. As long as the trend is improvement over time, you will be successful. It’s a bit like taking a multi-day roadtrip through a beautiful country. As long as you stay on your path, you will eventually get there. Take your time. Enjoy the sights—those are your progressions and drills. You can push your body to the limit racing day and night toward cork town, only stopping for gas and a monster energy drink. But why? You’re passing through a beautiful country!
Key Notes
- To improve a trick, you have to be able to make changes that stick.
- To attempt a new skill correctly, your take-off, aerial control, and landing must be consistent.
- In order to make use of tumble tracks, mats, and foam pits, you must be consistent in getting to the mats.
- Be consistent in your tricking training as well as your tricks
- Have things that you go through every practice for a couple weeks
- Take your time
- Use the same drills, and enjoy those drills
- Do the same ones for a period before progressing
- Realize when to take a step back. Are you tricking sustainably?
Mercenary Tricking 
A really nice article, so you say that even 2 sessions per week could be enough to improve, if you plan your sessions well?
P.S.
I don’t know if now or in general you always do 2 sessions a week, i wrote my question according on what you wrote in this article.
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