How many of you practice

We practice at least 3x a month. Sometimes we are doing full competitions for time and others it might be throw a handful of briskets/pork butts on and try different stuff.

We have friends over for input too. They even have to fill out a judge form.
 
95% of the time, if my smoker is running, it's because I'm practicing, and I bet my smoker is on at least every other weekend. I don't even compete that much, I think maybe 10 contests this year.
 
Our last comp was in Oct. and I cooked all the meats three times over that time frame.
In addition I have tried chicken recipes another three times. On the 19th we will cook a full practice on time line with box turn ins.
 
I practice as often as I can, which is pretty frequently and probably not enough. I may not do four meats but I'm doing 1-2.
 
Practice...practice...practice...I'm with the majority, if my smoker is heating up, I'm practicing. I'll track times, temps, make notes to adjust my methods and timelines if need be. I only cook 6 comps or so a year, so practice is needed just to continue to progress.
 
I practice my cooks and take a lot of notes. I don't do full blown competition practices where I stay out all night in the driveway, make boxes, etc...
 
I knew we'd be in the minority, but I didn't realize that most teams do practice with some regularity. But, we've always been a team that sort of does everything by the seat of our pants...haha. We've got a contest coming up pretty soon. I might just have to throw some ribs on a cooker this weekend.
 
we're doing a full dry run practice on the 20th. Since we are preparing for our first comp, we thought it would be good to do to get feel for everything. and see if we forgot anything.
 
I've never competed in anything that I didnt practice. IMHO you plan to fail by failing to plan (aka. practice).
 
fnbish said:
Yeah not everyone is into it as much as others in terms of feeling compelled to practice all the time. Some people have different goals. Some folks just want to go out and hang with their buddies/families and have a fun weekend. Some folks want to win every single time and practice a lot. So when they hear someone doesn't practice they can be shocked.
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True, my first thought was "That's even a question?" :wacko: Our practice theory is summed up below in my sig. You know it's only a theory though, since we didn't crack a cooker open from November to March LOL.

When there's no practice outside of competition, then every competition essentially becomes a practice session.

That's not to say that's necessarily a bad thing -- if the goals of the team are clearly defined. If the goal is to go hang out and have a good time, that's perfectly fine -- contest expenses are then the cover charge for doing so. As long as everyone on the team is satisfied with the defined team goal, then no friction will result.
 
We practice two meats at a time, adhering to turn in times, comp prep and even turn in boxes. Since I usually put together our turn in boxes, I have the guys slice and prep turn in meats in different ways so I can practice different turn in box layouts. We document everything on a cook form and take pics of practice turn in boxes - just like we would in an actual comp.
 
I am practicing pulled pork this weekend.

8 butts all 8 will be tested with diffrent injections, rubs and sauces. Also all 8 will go into KCBS style boxes for friends to judge. Just like I would do at a Comp.
 
Alexa RnQ said:
True, my first thought was "That's even a question?" :wacko: Our practice theory is summed up below in my sig. You know it's only a theory though, since we didn't crack a cooker open from November to March LOL.

When there's no practice outside of competition, then every competition essentially becomes a practice session.

That's not to say that's necessarily a bad thing -- if the goals of the team are clearly defined. If the goal is to go hang out and have a good time, that's perfectly fine -- contest expenses are then the cover charge for doing so. As long as everyone on the team is satisfied with the defined team goal, then no friction will result.
Click to expand...

As a team our No. 1 goal has always been to have a good time. If you don't enjoy it, then it is not worth doing. No. 2 is we want to do well. If we don't do well at an event we'll try and figure out why and improve on it at the next cook. We've learned an awful lot by screwing stuff up. haha
 
This has been our team's biggest issue in my opinion. I would love to get together and practice as much as we can. I practice on my own as often as I can.

Unfortunately I can't get the other two guys to meet up to even talk about practicing. I took Swamp Boys and 3Eyz class down in Winter Haven, FL and came back all pumped up ready to go. You'd think they would be ready to jump into things and see what I learned but not one sign of being interested.
 
Our practice is when we roll in the morning of turn ins and we overslept an hour, all of our smokers are cold, our ribs are way behind schedule and we need to figure out how to get it all in order. There is no way to practice for the way we cook.
 
I practice all of the time. It is the only way to test out different sauce and rub combinations.
 
Pole D said:
This has been our team's biggest issue in my opinion. I would love to get together and practice as much as we can. I practice on my own as often as I can.

Unfortunately I can't get the other two guys to meet up to even talk about practicing. I took Swamp Boys and 3Eyz class down in Winter Haven, FL and came back all pumped up ready to go. You'd think they would be ready to jump into things and see what I learned but not one sign of being interested.
Click to expand...

Yeah that kind of sucks. Maybe they just think you now have it all figured out now :becky:. I'm not a huge control freak (realtively speaking), but I'm glad that I'm the only one in the mix that calls the shots/has the final say in terms of when I practice and the road our team BBQ will go. I had no idea how our team would evolve, but I was into it the most and took the reins and no one else said otherwise. I like it being this way. Sometimes it would be nice to have others working on it too, but if I only have to worry about me then I know stuff will get done.
 
We're a 2 person team and we live an hour apart, so practice isn't frequent, but we do practice before we start the season up and if we have a long break between contests.

Once we get cranking we typically don't have more than 1 weekend off between cooks and rarely have more than 2 weekends between. There are some months this season where we'll be competing like 6 out of 8 weekends. We've got like 18-19 on the schedule for this year so we'll be busy.

We DO notice that when we are in the groove and doing back to back to back cooks, we do better. We're in synch more. We have a timeline and a system that we don't really need to practice, but we do need to be comfortable with it.


If anything, we practice to test new recipes or "tweaks" to current ones. Side-by-side comparisons are invaluable.
 
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