Learning Skills vs. Practicing Skills Learned

[Plainsman]

A great topic came up in another thread and rather than continue to hijack that thread, I thought I'd start this one! And then I realized it should have been in this forum!!

Learning a skill is very different from practicing a skill already learned. Learning a skill often takes more than just reading a book! I tried that for over a decade with primitive skills, and it took a lot of work and I still couldn't get some things to work out. I traded/bought some videos from Ron Hood and my learning curve went nearly vertical!! Watching and listening somebody else who knows what they are doing increases the speed of learning.

An even better method of learning the skills is to have that person actually teaching right beside you! They can correct errors immediately and answer questions on the spot! They help you spend your learning time more efficiently and increase the speed of the learning process.

Practicing skills comes in after the skill has been learned! Proper practice is useful to retain the skill and can be done alone. It is not the time where the skill is first learned.

Therefore, I feel any amount of money a person wishes to spend on LEARNING skills is money well spent! In the long run, it is a wise investment! As an example, I feel spending $395 on a course to learn how to create fire from Cody Lundin would be a real value!! He is a master of consistently creating fire in some very extreme conditions and everybody could learn something from him.

Also, learning is a two way street. Many teachers find they learn every time they teach, because students often look at things differently! Students either ask questions that cause one to look at a situation from a different angle or have a new tidbit of information to share!

 

[Shotgun]

I agree. I got the teaser video of Hood on Netflix where they have clips from different series to get you to buy them. I learned more in 5 mins about hypothermia than in the weeks of survival training I had with a local SAR team. I was also able to do a figure 4 on the first go because he was able to teach it so well.

We have a guy locally here who does wild food tours and teaches you the edible plants in the area. On his site he states out right that books are crap for learning this type of thing and that you need to have someone there with you that knows what they're doing. A cynic would say he's just trying to drum up business by keeping people from buying books. To those people all I got say is take the class and you'll realize he's right. Not only does he go into how to identify a plant at different stages of it's life cycle but when the plant is edible, what parts are edible, and the times of year the same plant is POISONOUS.

The old addage that "you don't know what you don't know" is a good one.

 

[tobii3]

I agree. I got the teaser video of Hood on Netflix where they have clips from different series to get you to buy them. I learned more in 5 mins about hypothermia than in the weeks of survival training I had with a local SAR team. I was also able to do a figure 4 on the first go because he was able to teach it so well.

It's also a known fact that people pay MORE attention when they are financially obligated to do so.

Give someone a book....they might read it. Charge them $200 for the class and they WILL read it. Human Nature at it's finest.

 

[Woods Walker]

I like Cody but never seen him do anything that some people on this forum couldn't do just as well. I think firecraft is a bit like wild edibles. Best learned one at a time IMHO. I feel the best way to learn this stuff is by first reading about it or being instructed, then doing it on your own and finally doing it in field conditions. There are plenty of skills I "learned" but then lost because of no practice. There must be a baker's dozen knots etc etc lost to the void. Not sure that's a bad thing. Some skills start out with a bang, like the first friction fire coal but then after a while it feels played out. Others for me like flint and steel never seems to get old. Having fun with chaga is timeless but fatwood...meh. So it seem some skills are personality related aka whatever sparks a person's interest. A skill that isn't fun within a hobby won't get practiced and is more likely to decay. I hate knots and when it came time to make a new ridgeline system it took me 1/2 an hour and the internet to work out the same friction knot I did years ago. In the woods by myself it wasn't going to happen.

 

[Barrabas]

Great thread, and great comments..I got out today to make a bird trap..thought I remembered *exactly* how..turns out I made it much more complicated than it was..thank God for youtube to get me back on track..some folks can see something once, and never forget..I'm a classic example of how easily great training can be lost if not practiced..good news is I learned a different method today to build a trap..just in case I want to waste an extra hour next time .