Originally Posted by
Pilot DAR
My experience in instructing has shown me that the instruction is like the flowing water, and the student is the sponge. It's the instructor's job to pour water onto the sponge only at a rate at which it's not flowing off, and running down uselessly. The student's job is to grow the sponge, so it can absorb more and more water, without wasting any. This means that the student arrives for the instruction with their sponge well wrung out of all of life's other distractions, and both ready to absorb, and, knowing how much it can absorb (having good questions).
A Great analogy. So for someone keen to get trained ASAP to take advantage of weather/time off etc, their optimal should be to train at the fastest rate that keeps them below saturation point. Which of course will be different for everyone. I remember primary flight training, I was doing 2 flights a day of around 1 hour. And it still felt like I had too much time sat on the ground waiting!