A friend asked me about my routine, and this is what I told him. Your mileage may vary:
I model my practicing after the regimen I followed when I was training to run marathons. My training for marathons went like this:
3 days a week, solid runs of 8-12 miles.
2 days a week speed workouts.
1 day a week do an LSD (long, slow distance) run of 15-22 miles.
1 day rest.
On trombone I do this:
3 days a week I do a 2-hour practice session, doing my daily routine and working on exercises and pieces I want to play. I do this workout whenever I have a gig later that same day. This is my bread and butter practice session. It's productive but doesn't leave me overly tired.
2 days a week I spend 1-1.5 hours on very difficult stuff, like building range or speed or flexibility. I generally practice to muscle failure on these days, so even though these are the shortest practice sessions, they are also the hardest and I'm very tired after these sessions. This is practicing at the very edge of my skill set. If there's a risk of practicing "too hard" it's on one of these days, so be smart about it.
1 day a week is an endurance session, where I play 4-5 hours straight, focusing on long tones, arpeggios, lip slurs and etudes/excerpts/jazz pieces. Nothing too heavy, just lots of time with horn-on-face, building endurance.
1 day a week rest. On these days I try not to play at all. But if I have a gig that day, I'll do the gig, but will show up to it cold and do a very light warmup, with no other playing that day.
I try to time it so that on days I have gigs, I will only do a two-hour practice session. That's because those are actually my lightest sessions. I won't do the shorter but very intense sessions, and I won't do an endurance session. And anytime I have a gig that day I will stop before I get too tired, so I have chops left for the gig.
Also, I stagger the different kinds of sessions as much as possible. I don't want to be doing the same kind of practice session two days in a row if I can help it. An ideal week might be:
Day 1: 2 hr bread and butter session
Day 2: 1 hr killer session
Day 3: 2 hr bread and butter session
Day 4: 1 hr killer session
Day 5: 2 hr bread and butter session
Day 6: 4-5 hr endurance session
Day 7: Rest
Doing that kind of regimen maximizes my ability and eventually makes me feel like I can play forever without tiring, which is where I was at before smashing my chops up a couple weeks ago.
Important: Rest and recovery are as important as playing. That's why I always try to rest as much as I play while practicing, and always take one day off completely if I can.
That's my experience, and it seems to work pretty well for me.
What's your plan for getting as good as you possibly can?
