Hand Speed?

Roper

I seem to remember someone posting up a vid of some JKD guy doing a demo and he had "amazing hand speed". Anyway I was less than convinced as to me it was fairly average. Faster than me (not too much of a challenge there), but average all the same.

So for comparison, take a look at this for hand speed. Pretty Boy's workout

Dragan

Quick alright.

Baggio...

What was the name of that JKD guy, was it Paul Vunak?

Cheers,

B.

GOAT_Ali

PBF is awesome, still slower than Ray Leonard or Ali......that was a great clip all the same. Speedball was superb. Bruce Lee was no slouch either, though he didn't possess the Power of the guys mentioned above or technique

Roper

Baggio,
No, some scottish guy.

Hey Goat, it'd take a lot to be faster than Ali or Leonard! The speedball with the coke can is quality!

GOAT_Ali

Agreed Roper, but he's real fast all the same. One hand on the speed ball. But what was most impressive was how he rotated around the ball, maintaining the same speed and Rhythm. Them balls are so very difficult to master, pure hand to eye coordination.

GOAT_Ali

Elytron wrote:

He ain't so fast.

You're some wind up merchant!!!!

Michael O Leary

Roper wrote:

I seem to remember someone posting up a vid of some JKD guy doing a demo and he had "amazing hand speed". Anyway I was less than convinced as to me it was fairly average. Faster than me (not too much of a challenge there), but average all the same.

So for comparison, take a look at this for hand speed. Pretty Boy's workout

Hi Roper,

There were two similar threads. I am no good at inserting links so I will have to do it the old fashioned way and resurrect the old threads. One was called "Hand Speed" and the other, "Is this guy any good?"

Regarding the above link and the person's hand speed I would say it is nothing special and I could probley go as fast if not faster. Now I am only talking about speed and not co-ordination with the ball. The guy pivots on his elbow so you could say he is only using one limb. It is what beginners in Wing Tsun do and we spend years knocking it out of them as there is no power in it.

Have a look at what the guy in the thread "Hand Speed" does. He pivots on both the elbow and shoulder, is faster doing it even though it is more difficult and the shots have much more power as the full body weight is behind each strike. He is a Wing Tsun practitioner from I think Denmark. However I do acknowledge that his opponent is static which makes it easier than using a speed ball. Speed wise it is harder for the WT guy, coordination wise harder for the boxer but I am only talking about speed here.

Yeah, the third guy is I think a JKD guy from Scotland.

Regards,

Michael O'Leary
www.wingtsun-escrima.ie

Roper

Michael,
Speed ball is a conditioning/speed drill. It's not a demonstration of perfect punching technique, which Floyd has BTW. This is the same speed ball drill you'll see in boxing gyms worldwide, and boxing gets results far in excess of anything most martial arts, Wing Tsun included, can hope for.

For evidence of Floyd's "multi limb" approach to boxing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu-vyDZgRO8&search=floyd%20mayweather

Millionaire

I could never really figure out what practical use speed ball has???

You can say eye hand coordination...

however that speed ball, type of hand movement (i would not really say its a punch).... thats not going to be used in a fight.

Miles Long

Roper wrote:

Speed ball is a conditioning/speed drill. It's not a demonstration of perfect punching technique

I agree, I'd figure it more a stamina building drill than one that would have directly practical applications in a sparring/fighting instance. Unless of course you go to the same gym as Popeye the Sailorman?

Dragan

Millionaire wrote:

You can say eye hand coordination...

Hand eye co-ordination is vital, to pretty much any sport. Where your hitting a gold ball, throwing a punch or firing an arrow, hand eye is the basic denominator in accuracy.

People think about speedball and hand eye the wrong way. Accuracy and co-ordination comes from the central nervous system, how it fires, how efficently and how fast. Practice makes the CNS better at a giving task.

Speedball works on accuracy because you eye has to track the balls movements, interpret them, analysis where the ball SHOULD be going, send the command down the correct nervous and muscular chain and then have your hand move in the correct form to where the ball should be.

This basic principle applies to every punch you will ever throw, your eye tracks the movement of the head, predicts where it will be and the tries to get you hand there. It doesn't matter what is moving, or where or in what range.

The very basis of "fast hands" is a fast central nervous system and a highly trained neuro-muscular connection. Speedball work is one of the best excercises going to work on the neuro-muscular link.

Roper

What Dragan said! Hand eye-coordination! The faster your hands, the more your CNS has to keep up.

The drill your watching is for when an opening presents itself in a fight. 0.01 seconds of an opening, the brain recognises and the hands respond without the fighter really knowing about it. The result of hours on the speedbag, floor to ceiling bag and sparring.

damo

Cool video....he gonna fight De La Hoya this year?

Roper

Yeah, soon apparently. Word is that he and De La Hoya go soon, then we have to see Hatton and someone, maybe Gatti, before we get to see Floyd and Hatton, which is basically the fight everyone wants to see.

Dragan

Roper wrote:

The drill your watching is for when an opening presents itself in a fight. 0.01 seconds of an opening, the brain recognises and the hands respond without the fighter really knowing about it. The result of hours on the speedbag, floor to ceiling bag and sparring.

Spot on.

Mill, to break it down in a way that you will appreciate!!! You always say about doing the basics, finding the simple moves and doing them, over and over and over, thousands of times until there are almost ingrained in your system and you can call on them without even realising it!!!

This is exactly the same thing. The reason you repeat the move over and over, and the reason you get better at it, is that your brain and you CNS become more efficent at performing the action, the muscular and nervous connections respond quicker , it literally becomes instinct to do so.

I would bet that you can go back to a point where you performed a strike or a combo that you had practiced without even thinking about it, it just happened. This is you brain recognising the situation you have trained for, interpreting the stimulus and the required actions and just doing it, kind of below the level of thought process that complex decision making happens!!!

There is also an argument in place that when training, if you think about the given situation completely.... i.e when you hitting the speedball all your doing is thinking about taking advantage of the opening, seeing your opponents guard open slightly, seeing the shot connect, that this plays a large part in your brain subconciously acting on the opportuinity, that it gets dennoted to the "instinctive" level of neuro command, which opporates seperately to the concious thought process.

At the moment though, this is only a theory, but there is some anecdotal evidence to suggest it's pretty accurate.

Michael O Leary

Roper wrote:

Michael,
Speed ball is a conditioning/speed drill. It's not a demonstration of perfect punching technique.

Hi Roper,

I accept that. I was just talking about pure hand speed. Regarding being able to percive an opening this is what we train for in Chi-Sau for hours upon hours, years upon years. By taking the eyes out of the equation and relying on the sense of touch the limbs react faster. This is when contact is made. Before contact is made we blast in with rapid punches to the head. We do not place as much emphasis on standing toe to toe and looking for a precise shot as if we miss we can convert our failed punch into something else so that we can elbow, knee, grapple, etc. Again, different drills for different strategies.

Chi-Sau in my eyes is not about trapping. I feel it all comes from Bruce Lee who did Wing Chun for about 3 years only and got good results when he used it against martial artists from the US in the 60's. I think that people cottoned on to these trapping tricks and they have been largely discredited but as they view trapping through JKD eyes by default they also discredit Chi-Sau. To do so I feel is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Hi Dragan,

Your post was very interesting especially about thinking about the given situation compleatly. If I understand you then one term for it is "Creative Visualisation". If you hold a chain/piece of string with a weight attached and imagine it going back and forward then your brain is sending subconcious signals to your hand and this will happen without you trying to move your hand. I imagine this relates to any type of mental focus in training.

Regards all,

Michael O'Leary
www.wingtsun-escrima.ie

Dragan

Michael O Leary wrote:

Hi Dragan,

Your post was very interesting especially about thinking about the given situation compleatly. If I understand you then one term for it is "Creative Visualisation". If you hold a chain/piece of string with a weight attached and imagine it going back and forward then your brain is sending subconcious signals to your hand and this will happen without you trying to move your hand. I imagine this relates to any type of mental focus in training.

Spot on Michael to use the example you gave if you combine holding the chain and just thinking about what is happening, with just think about it, with holding the chain and actively moving it.... eventually everytime you hold it you will instantly swing it, with no concious thought whatsoever.....hardly useful for anything but a good example none the less!!!

To be honest i would almost thing of it as being involved with the Chi-Sau technique you spoke of for example.

There is no effective way for the sense of touch to be processed quicker the sight. (i believe will need to check a few medical texts to make sure!!!) As fast as even a well trained CNS can be the touch will still need to travel up the correct chain, be interpreted by the brain, which would need to decide on the action ( in that handy little sub level again if you have trained enough.... as you said, over and over and over again! ) and then send that back down the correct chain to carry out the movement.

With sight what you see gets to you at the speed of light and is processed faster as the neuro trasmitters that work on the interpretation of optics are the fastest in the human body ( i think, once again i need to check this out!)

However..... the fact that touch can seem to be faster should not be dismissed...the very act of that touch, combined with years and years of training and the effective sub programming of suitable response can lead to a far faster practiced reaction, than the effective new interpretation the eyes must do each time.

In short, the eyes must see and say do....whereas with the correct training touch = do!!!

Michael O Leary

Hi Dragan,

Do you mind if we look into this about sight and touch, not with the idea of proving one another wrong, just to explore it? Hell, I am not a doctor but Wing Tsun books that I have read suggest the opposite to what you have said and have referred to medical science to back themselves up. I am interested by what you have heard about the subject.

Regarding the mental attitute one of the best bits of advice given to me was by Master Bill Newman, the head of our Escrima system. When training for a drill, exercise, technique he says that we should focus on killing/defeating/destroying our opponent but in our head only. So that even when we are practicing under control we should have an attitute of focused aggression.

Regards,

Michael O'Leary
www.wingtsun-escrima.ie

Dragan

Michael O Leary wrote:

Hi Dragan,

Do you mind if we look into this about sight and touch, not with the idea of proving one another wrong, just to explore it? Hell, I am not a doctor but Wing Tsun books that I have read suggest the opposite to what you have said and have referred to medical science to back themselves up. I am interested by what you have heard about the subject.

Regarding the mental attitute one of the best bits of advice given to me was by Master Bill Newman, the head of our Escrima system. When training for a drill, exercise, technique he says that we should focus on killing/defeating/destroying our opponent but in our head only. So that even when we are practicing under control we should have an attitute of focused aggression.

Regards,

Michael O'Leary
www.wingtsun-escrima.ie

No worries, give me a few days to refresh my mind on some of the more complicated medical aspects of it!! I'm not a doctor either.... not sure i would be up for that job... i do have a horrifying addiction to learning though!!

The main problem is that for each study i could find to say one thing, i will most likey find something else to confound the issue!!!

I guess the important thing is that the Chi-Sau technique works!!!