Hello everyone!
Im going through a phase with a lot of practicing of sleights and routines and doing some fine tuning and refinements. I would like to hear, how do you practice?
I was reading through Michael Close book Closley guarded secrets and his advice if you want to become really good at what your doing is, Focus and only practice what you use. What do you think about that? Most magicians seems to be practicing everything just for the sake of it.
Whats your thoughts?
I think it all depends on the person and what you’re going for. I do agree with Michael Close that if you want to be good practice what you’re going to use. Me I love sleights and love practicing them but they have there place. The routine is what counts IMO
I try to devote as much practice but with schedules today it’s hard. I try to do something like this:
10 min run through: I run through easy things to get my hands moving and lose like shuffling, dribbling, fanning, ribbon spreading, cuts, things of that nature.
Then I move to sleights that I’m comfortable with such as strike seconds and bottoms, glides, forces, top and bottom stock controls etc. I spend 10-15mins with each sleight. Martin A. Nash said that to practice more than 15 min on a move is over kill and counter productive and to move on to the next and come back to it later. I agree with this.
Next is sleights that need work such as: Double lifts, Pinky count, push off seconds and bottoms, classic pass, elmsley count, culling, palming etc. 10-15 mins each move.
Now I move on to the actual effects and work on those for awhile and their patter.
Then after that I would move on to the sleights that I want to learn such as one hand shuffles, one hand shifts, mucks, one hand seconds bottoms, center deal etc. for future effects and/or for alternative handlings for effects.
It’s hard to fit all of it in one day but it usually tallys up to 3 hours total. The weekends I try to put together a routine with the help of a few friends. I like so many effects that my set would last about 10 hour’s lol.
My way of practicing is far from perfect and prob not efficient to others but it has worked for me so far. I think lol.
Mike