I see people in the fighters guild+arena and stuff hammering away at dummies with their weapons. Also i see targets for practicing archery in some places, like by the fighters guild. can you hit these with your weapons or shoot your bow at the targets to increase your weapons skills?

Haha, I spent ten minutes beating a punching bag. I didn't level up once.

I shot the target for a few but it didn't seem like it would help much because my Marksmanship is already up alot, so I figured it would take alot of target hitting to level.

I think you can only level up Marksman through practice, though I might be wrong.

I leveled my marksman entirely by shooting creatures in the countryside.

My suggestion to quickly beefing up for any respective quest or random encounter you might have.

Use your spare time and wander around the province aimlessly.

I leveled like 4 times on a couple round trips to the edges of Cyrodil, just by slaying Goblins and murdering bandits, raiding caves', wandering abondoned elvish temples and such, stopping in towns to restock on munitions and repair armor and weapons.

This is my plan. I figure you dont make enough money looting level one bandits, so might as well level 4-5 levels just mugging rats and such on the outside. Can anyone confirm if loot in chests and such inside dungeons is Level Based as well? Is it better to clear a cave but come back when a higher level?? Also, do bandits in those caves respawn??

You just summon a skeleton, kill it and instant xp.

This is a simple way to level them. Like with spells, you must actually strike something for it to count as practice. Keep in mind you may find an animal or person who has tons of health points and use something like an iron dagger on it - you'll get tons of 'hits,' but not kills the enemy very quickly.

But the summon/kill way is simple and works well, and you can practice soul trap at the same time if you like.

In this case, I've done no leveling of weapons (although I have trained blunt a bit since I never use blunt weapons); there's plenty of 'real' battles to be had and you'll level just fine. My blade is second highest next to strength.

or, if you go to this one castle (Sheynidhal(or what ever it is... eastern city) I think thats the one with the items in the display cases. Unlock those and they turn out to be replicas... that take out 0 damage. just run up to a rat with one of those things. I would think that woks.

It does until the rat hits back. Maybe it works on people?