How to improve speed and reflex?

CaraFawn

Anyone would have some good tips on how to improve general strike and defense speed and reflex?

Just general tips I suppose, regardless of my art, which is ninpo taijutsu if that helps.

Thanking you in advance

Doug Cartel

Make sure you're always training with aliveness (eg, not dead patterns), and spar as much as possible. There are no short cuts - practice, practice, practice.

yomchi

It's hard to give such tips for such important aspects of striking and defending over an internet forum. Ideally your coach/instructor should be able to provide drills for improving speed and reflexes.

What do you do at the moment to increase speed and reflexes?

CaraFawn

Cheers guys
I am just looking at general tips I suppose, not necessarely related to the technic and combination of moves I am doing in the club where I am training.

You know like improving suppleness or endurance by doing streching and cardio.

As a start I believe I could use some sort of wrist weight for example? Are they effective, anyone tried them?

YamaMotoYama

CaraFawn wrote: »

Cheers guys
I am just looking at general tips I suppose, not necessarely related to the technic and combination of moves I am doing in the club where I am training.

You know like improving suppleness or endurance by doing streching and cardio.

As a start I believe I could use some sort of wrist weight for example? Are they effective, anyone tried them?

Plyometric excercises... look them up on youtube.

They help improve your explosive movements... punches, kicks and foot speed/movement.

yomchi

CaraFawn wrote: »

Cheers guys
I am just looking at general tips I suppose, not necessarely related to the technic and combination of moves I am doing in the club where I am training.

You know like improving suppleness or endurance by doing streching and cardio.

As a start I believe I could use some sort of wrist weight for example? Are they effective, anyone tried them?

I see, for any improvement in explosiveness you first have the core strength to be able to deliver it. There are some great exercises for improving core and over all strength in this guys video's.

http://www.youtube.com/user/andymcd23#p/a/u/2/EaYeGviEzT8

Pride Fighter

Spar as much as possible. It'll make your reactions instinctive. When I think of reflexes I think of things like parrying, bobbing and weaving. Shadow boxing could help as well.

The previous posts cover the speed. Plyometric excercises are brilliant. Certainly will make you quicker.

pearsquasher

Anyone would have some good tips on how to improve general strike and defense speed and reflex?

Just general tips I suppose, regardless of my art, which is ninpo taijutsu if that helps.

I agree with all the posters on what would help in speed and reflex training - I did lots myself in sparring-orientated training in my teens/20's.

HOWEVER - ninpo taijusu i.e Bujinkan ISN'T geared towards using speed and power in combat. Bujinkan works with distance, angling and timing, amongst other things, for surviving aggression. By all means work on speed and reflexes but body structure and the integration of the entire body (taijutsu) while doing everything in class is number 1 on the agenda. Speed and reflex is secondary... and usually follows naturally anyway. I recommend yoga for core-strength and flexibility training. Bujinan is for "taijutsu" (whole-body integration)

siochain

Yoga & Pilates
&
Sparring, lots of 30 meter sprints at your max, plyometrics, viper cords, vertical box jumps etc.

Niall Keane

OP, a system of Nei Gung might be more appropriate for a fighter, basically they're like yoga etc, but each move / exercise has martial significance, so you're training your muscle memory at the same time to do something martially useful. Most trad styles will have something like this involved in their curriculum, nothing new under the sun and all.

I also use an exercise called rolling thunder punching with weights, basically 2kg weights in each hand and rolling thunder, similar but not quite the same as jab and cross repeated for 20 minutes. 150 / minute punches at first build up past 180 / minute. I find this excellent for striking speed training.

Having said all that, I would agree with a previous poster, speed and reaction is the wrong thing to focus on. They should be by-products. TIMING, ANGLE and RANGE are key. Learn to use your guard to entice / draw your opponent - then you’ll be able to as the classics suggest: “let him strike first, but I arrive first”. Combined with angled defence, i.e. not rolling up the tank and trading, but seeking advantage by moving will solve the speed issue. It ties him up and shortens the range when done right. Re. reaction, forget about his weapons, look to the heart it tells the truth, and keep his feet in peripheral at all times. Once ingrained, you can start messing with glancing one way and striking another etc… This should all be trained first by single technique practice, then through sparring. I know there’s those who’ll say spar, spar, spar, I don’t agree, there’s plenty out there who’ll forever roll up the tank and for whom martial art means a war of attrition, there’s a word for them, journeymen, some people are indeed naturals, and seem to pick it all up immediately, most of us do not. Doing a few rounds of heavy sparring each training time is enough, no need to spend two hours on it, unless you’re gearing up for a fight, and by that stage you shouldn’t have any worries about speed or reaction, nor timing, angle or range.

Just my take on it?

yomchi

I'm not gone on the whole argument of just spar spar spar, especially when you want to refine one aspect of sparring.

You could say to someone spar more, but you don't really know if they are getting the coaching that has them sparring correctly. They may be sparring in a fashion that has them progressing backwards almost.

Drilling is the key, drill your fundamentals and have your supplementary exercises that are going be geared towards your speed and agility.

corkma

pads, pads and more pads. sometimes with sparring you'll go into survival mode and won't be improving. I found that getting the mental element right has helped me a lot. Everytime I spar, do pad work, shadow boxing or any other drills I'm constantly thinking light and fast light and fast. If I become sluggish it's laziness

Dyr

CaraFawn wrote: »

Just general tips I suppose, regardless of my art,

i dont think general tips will work well when it comes to three subjects that are going to be particular to your activity

Also I'm sure the scientimfical people here can clear this up, but my understanding is that reflex actions are not conscious or voluntary. That would make training them pretty difficult

corkma

maybe it's a misnomer. either way, training for reflex, in a fight sense, improves coordination,makes you sharper and builds muscle memory. So you spot openings and hit without too much thought. You practice responses and reactions that become habit and reflex

Peetrik

One of the best coachs I trained under used to make us hit the bag as many times as we could in 60 seconds.

We then had to try beat that record. We got faster week by week.

That said this could just have been his way of evaulating if some other speed training he was having us do was working and I have misunderstood his methods as Im not a coach

Barry.Oglesby

Bambi wrote: »

Also I'm sure the scientimfical people here can clear this up, but my understanding is that reflex actions are not conscious or voluntary. That would make training them pretty difficult

Yup, you're entirely right. Worse still a lot of what we term reflex is actually dumb luck when examined.

Sid_Justice

Peetrik wrote: »

One of the best coachs I trained under used to make us hit the bag as many times as we could in 60 seconds.

We then had to try beat that record. We got faster week by week.

That said this could just have been his way of evaulating if some other speed training he was having us do was working and I have misunderstood his methods as Im not a coach

May not really improve your speed or reflexes, might just improve your conditioning so you get less tired at the end and your punches don't slow down.

Peetrik

Sid_Justice wrote: »

May not really improve your speed or reflexes, might just improve your conditioning so you get less tired at the end and your punches don't slow down.

Yep, very possible,

Just seemed quite lateral

CaraFawn

Thanks for the feedbacks so far guys, much appreciated

Niall Keane

OP I take it you mean reaction rather than reflex and it's scientific meaning? Otherwise you'll get really pedantic answers re. The impossibility of creating reflex movement similar to a hammer on the knee. Some answers on the thread are already drifting that way though its obvious to any fighter exactly what you mean. Just a word of caution so you don't waste your time!