Speed

[Slayer]

Ok probly there must have been tons of posts on how to develope speed, well I mostly go to the Wing Chun forum. Anyways, what are good techniques for developing speed with hands and foot work.

[Ish]

practice your techniques lots and lots and lots and lots. Then try doing them faster and faster and faster.

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

in my style we do them slower and slower to develope speed.

where's my beer?

[ElPietro]

Yeah I think faster and slower are both good used in conjunction. If you start off training go slowly...this doesn't necessarily create speed but allows for you to build more speed. If you do forms or moves slowly you are forced to use the muscles involved for a greater duration causing them to adjust to the movements...as well you can be sure you are using proper form. Then once you can do that you slowly increase the speed each time and eventually you are lightning quick. Just my thoughts.

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

i agree that this would be a more efficient way to build speed .. if that is all your looking to build at the time .. but i'm also a firm believer that training slowly builds speed by itself. i actually posted something about this on a speed thread on the mail forum . . . let me look that up and i'll put it here as well.

where's my beer?

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

here is a link to the actual thread.

speed thread (http://forum.kungfuonline.com/1/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=126197291&f=340190991&m=5831900492)

the thread stared with about an article writen by s. sonnon. he states ..

"2. I wrote earlier that one of the conventional methods for increasing speed is: Rehearsal. If you sufficiently repeat a maneuver so many times, you will put it in muscle memory.
This is such a waste of time as to be nauseating. Practice does NOT make perfect. PERFECT practice makes perfect.
Furthermore, conventional lunacy also tells us that if we rehearse "techniques" faster, than we will execute them "faster." Why is the concept of technique absent in R.O.S.S. Training System? This issue is one of the reasons why (there are others). If one views a technique as a way to accomplish an objective, then we condition ourselves to rush for the objective; when in fact it is the middle-ground of the technique that counts (furthermore, it is the movement in between techniques that gives us access to fighting skills but this goes to another topic.)
What does this mean? It means train ULTRA-SLOW if you want to be fast. Speed is a character of movement. QUALITY of movement depends upon biomechanical efficiency: how little energy you use to accomplish the goal. If you speed through rehearsing techniques, you do not improve the QUALITY of the movement - you do not see and augment your proficiency. Instead speed rehearsal CONCEALS and worse EMBEDS inefficiency. Ultra-slow training contrarily does the opposite. Do this, and watch your performance sky-rocket!
Ultra-slow training encourages biomechanical, structural and respiratory efficiency through your maneuvers. When this happens, speed UNCONSCIOUSLY increases because of fluidity. Your neuromuscular pathways can be deep, but if they are like a roughly hewn river bed, your abilities are signficantly dampened. Instead your neuromuscular pathway, should be as smooth as a skateboarder's dream pipe, or the belly of an alpine luge. Imagine then how much FASTER you become just because of the surface smoothness of the groove!!!"


my reply to the topic was this . ..

practicing slow definatley works for both speed and skill. i don't know why or how, but i know it works from experience.
i may not have the nhb experience some of you have but i know that my speed
and power have more than doubled since i started with my curent sifu and this is the way he makes us train most of the time. my sifu is also 47, and granted i didn't see him when he was younger, but he says he's never been faster. i have no reason not to believe him as he's pretty got **** quick. i could quote him best for "watch your speed .
. you guys are going to fast, focus on what you are doing."

we go fast allot too, but he says it's to work the heart and lungs and to get the idea
that you have to go fast out of your system through exhaustion. we are also working external techniques when going fast, not tiachi. we will do allot of pad work or what not with boxing punches, muythia kicks/elbows, and the little bit of pukalan he passes on to us newbies.

when we are training tiachi (which is the core of our shcool) we go very slowly, especially while we spar, and our guys can definately fight. infact, as i have stated before, in his younger days my sifu wouldn't advance students to their black belt or
first dragon levels until he actually saw them fight. he just took them to bars until something happened. he has grown out of this as he has gotten older, but our current "new student ego buster" is just slightly smaller than me by about 5 or 10 pounds. i stand 5'4'' and weigh 140. it's funny to watch a guy my size send a 300lb monster flying to the ground repetedly in
what becomes a medium to full contact match because of the big guys deflating ego. most of what i see him using on these guys (especially when they start picking up the pace and intensity) are internal techniques.

also, i can see how doing nothing but fast paced sparring (even full contact) could possibly develope bad habbits like tagging the knee with a side kick in a fight rather than stepping through and snapping it. when you go slow you can break it down and get the feeling of actually driving through someones knee without injuring your sparring partner.

i train and spar fast becuase im young and its fun. but when i really want to work my power and speed i go slow. i'm definately not saying that fast paced training doesn't have it's benifits, or that it wont make you faster (in fact i would agree that it's a more efficient way to train just speed), but i fear that it will make me fast and sloppy vs. fast with pefrect form behind every punch. i may be wrong but i believe that more than half of your power is generated by throwing the punch correctly not by adding speed.

my sifu trained at a school where he watched people train both ways and had the opportunity to see guys who trained both ways fight.
the people who trained fast all the time tried to play patty cake with their opponent and got beat down. the others broke people. this was an internal school though. i'm doubt that the two different ways of training would dictate the same results for an external style like boxing or muithia.

i think we would all agree that speed is largely generated by relaxation. practicing a specific punch slowly for a long time will cause you go become extremely relaxed with the movement even when you do throw it fast. again, my knoledge of anatomy and physiology is limited, but i'm absolutely certain that practicing a movement slowly will eventually increase your speed with that particular movement. maybe not as quickly as practicing the movent fast, but i think that there is so much more going on with internal styles that speed development is secondary and can evolve at its own pace. it's probably more effiticent for at least interal stylists to be ingraining all the other attributes such as rooting, harmonizing breath and body, perfecting body alignment, developing power through perfect movement and sinking, building intent, and working speed (at least some degree) while going slow vs. only working speed and power while going fast.

both ways of training will teach you to fight (fast paced training will get you ready for a fight in a shorter span of time), but i think that it would be allot harder to become a true artist and to keep developing your fighting ability into old age only training fast.

then again, i have only been training in this style for under 2 years so i could be completely full of poop.

where's my beer?

[Cyborg]

Speed is the absence of wasted motion. Refine your technique so that there is none. Whenever you practice isolate the necessary muscles and try not to use any other muscle as it will conflict and slow you down. Example: don't tense the bicep and tricep at the same time.

"Box a fighter and fight a boxer". Bruce Lee