Did 950 hrs my first year of instruction. In SA law you can only do 6 hours of ab initio instruction, but plenty days did the 6 hrs, plus 2 hrs of advanced instruction. Also none of my instruction hours are sim hours, never log simulator instruction, despite the new logbooks now having a column for it.
Just be careful of over doing it though. After 5 hrs in the air, and another 3-4 hrs of pre/post flight briefings, it's natural to not be able to put in 100% for your last few hours of the day. Which ultimately isn't fair on the students concerned!