Can Magicians Practice Too Much?

Should magicians practice all the time?

In his book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell argues that it takes around ten thousand hours of practice to become a master within a field. That may be true, but the quality of the practice time is just as important. Dominic Reyes talks about a common mistake magicians make when they start to practice magic. They over do it:

It’s easy to believe that the best magicians practice every waking hour they get, but that’s often not the case. If you are new to magic, chances are that you currently have a level of obsession about it. In fact, that obsession may never go, but it could be getting in the way of you making progress. Spending hours at a time, every day, can cause burn out, leading to long breaks where you don’t feel like working on your technique at all. If you do stay motivated and continue to practice in long sessions, you may find that most of the improvement you get, comes from the first 10-20 minutes of each session, whilst you are fresh, paying attention, and motivated.

Having said that, you should practice EVERY DAY, but not for hours at a time. Long sessions of research may be effective, but when it comes to training your hands and mind to learn a technique, short sessions with plenty of breaks may get you better results in the long term.

The best magicians practice sessions often involves short, regular sessions of practice, with time in-between to recover, assess, and consolidate what you have learned.

Setting a magicians practice goal

4 steps to becoming a magician

How many magic tricks should you practice?

The First Magic Tricks a Magician Should Learn

by Dominic Reyes 2 Comments

How to pick the first magic tricks a magician should learn

Mark writes: 'I found you book on magic practice helpful, but I don't know which tricks to start work on. How do I choose my first effect? Any help?'

There are so many magic tricks to learn. The magic shop stocks over 20,000 tricks.. How does a beginner know where to start? The answer isn't to browse through the shop until you find a trick that fools you. You're not the person you want to fool.

Here's a short video from Dominic Reyes about choosing the right magic tricks to start learning magic:

When you are a complete beginner, the first goal is to understand HOW you are going to perform, rather than what you will be performing. You need to find your style. Will you be serious, funny, mystical, urban, classic, polite, cheeky..? Until you have an understanding about the style that suits you, and the audience that you will entertain, it's very hard to practice the presentation of any magic trick.

It's a good idea to choose self working tricks when you first start out. Easy mechanics, means that you can move on to presentation as quickly as possible. Presentation is the KEY to good magic practice. The mechanics can be drilled, but your performing style needs to develop through performance. If you learn a few easy to do tricks at the beginning, you can start performing to your family and friends, and in doing so, discover a presentation style that fits YOU.

This discovery stage also extends to the fields of magic that you can choose. Will you be a card mechanic, a coin worker, a jack of all trades..? There's so much to learn before you even try to practice your first sleight of hand. Taking the time to understand how you will present your magic, will naturally point you in the direction of the first 'harder' effects you will want to tackle.

Learning Sleight of Hand is Like Comic Collecting

by Dominic Reyes 1 Comment

By Dominic Reyes

Mark is new to magic and is learning sleight of hand. He is working on controls and sleights rather than tricks and effects..

Mark asks: 'I am new to card magic or any magic for that matter. I have been strictly working on my card handling with barely any work on tricks, just the occasional tricks to show to my kids. I really like working on controls, trying to get the card from middle to top and bottom but am struggling with most of them. What would be your recommendation of a control I should use or practice that is the most practical?'

Hi Mark,

It's great to hear that you are putting in so much work into your card skills. The results you get are directly proportional to the quality of magic practice you are prepared to do.

Sleight of hand and comic collecting

Did you read comics when you were a kid? I did, in fact, I still read the odd issue of The Walking Dead from time to time. I even collected a few titles when I was back in college. Some of my friends got really into it. They would buy every issue (sometimes two copies) and store them carefully inside a Mayar protective sleeve, with an acid free backing board to keep them in A1 condition. Those comics became 'investments' in their eyes, and they loved every moment of collecting.

There's a little problem with this that used to worry them. The paper in 20th century comics was CHEAP. It contained acid, which over time eats away at the paper. Even though they had done everything they could to keep their 'archive' away from conditions that would damage the paper, it was the ink and paper itself that would slowly fall apart and turn to dust over 20,40,50 years..

Learning sleight of hand as a collection of moves is a bit like comic collecting. When you build an archive of sleights they build up and get mastered over time. But as soon as you stop drilling them, they start to corrode.

Honestly ask yourself: How many of these moves will you remember in 10 years time?

The only techniques you will be able to remember and perform well, will be the ones you constantly perform.

Time destroys muscle memory. Without regular repetition, your controls and moves will degrade until you are disappointed with each one. You need constant performance to keep things fresh and remember all the mechanics. If you collect moves outside of performance pieces (tricks) to use them, you may end up like the old comic collector that goes up to his attic to find his stacked up boxes of comics are just filled with bags of paper dust.

Sleight of hand and painting

Studying just moves, controls and sleights endlessly is like a painter, spending years learning how to perfectly mix the oil paints to every shade of colour… They end up with a huge palette of paints, but no paintings….

Choose tricks and effects first, then MASTER the controls, moves and sleights you need to perform that effect. Now you have improved your skills with a goal at the end.

Which move should you learn next? Start researching effects that you can build into sets of tricks to form an act. Be REALLY selective. Pick tricks that amaze you, but that will also entertain an audience. They need to be perfect for the type of venue you will perform within, and the type of people that will also be there.

Once you have selected your tricks, start on just one, and work on the controls, moves, and sleight of hand that is required to fully master it. That's what I recommend you work on next.