Help with a weekend slump in meditation practice On work days (5 days a week), I'm normally able to get in around 4-4.5 hours of meditation a day, normally walking and sitting for 45 minutes each and then some Anapana meditation usually at the start and end of each day. On the weekends, I usually am able to do the same sort of practice but around 8-10 hours worth. Curiously though, on the weekends, it seems like my practice takes something of a slump, if it is even that. Towards the end of the day on weekends the pain that normally arises in my leg and I am normally able to be mindful of becomes exceptionally more intense, to the point that I'm sometimes only able to sit for 30 minutes. I know the length you sit isn't so much important as how mindful you're able to be; I guess what I'm trying to ask is, how should I reflect on this, and also how should I judge the "progress" of my personal practice in general? Thank you
Because of the longer sits you are likely graduating to the higher Visuddhiñanas, such as Visuddhiñana #3: sammasana-ñana


  Seeing how each object, even while being noticed, comes to destruction
  and disappearance, the meditator comprehends it as impermanent in the
  sense of undergoing destruction. He further comprehends it as
  suffering (painful) in the sense of breaking up after each arising.
  Having seen how various painful feelings arise in continuous
  succession — how if one painful feeling ceases, another arises, and
  when that has ceased, again another arises — having seen that, he
  comprehends the respective objects as just a conglomeration of
  suffering. Further, he comprehends the object as consisting of mere
  impersonal phenomena without a master, in the sense of not arising of
  (or by) themselves, but arising subject to conditions and then
  breaking up.
  
  This comprehension of an object noticed, as being impermanent,
  painful, and without a self (impersonal), through knowing its nature
  of impermanency, etc., by means of simply noticing, without reflecting
  and reasoning, is called "knowledge by comprehension through direct
  experience."


source: Progress of Insight, Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw

The solution is to intensify the observation of the sensations, and break down the pain into smaller component parts. Notice that even the most solidified pain has impermanence - it occurs in pulses and waves - the pain is not uniform from moment to moment.

When you see the pain as not a solid mass but also born of the cycle of birth and death the pain should dissipate. Don't decommission your knee or joints by overdoing it, be gentle on your body and mindfully change positions if you can't bear it. Buddhism needn't be masochism :)

The next ñana (knowledge) Arising and Passing away is important. Good luck, your dedication is admirable.