How can one increase their speed? Let's divide this thread; Speed; 1. Hands (i.e. punching) 2. Legs (i.e. kicking and kneeing) 3. Movement (i.e. upperbody movement for dodging a strike, footwork for moving around your opponent, etc.) It seems that simple repitition fails to create more speed. What training methods will help increase speed in these areas? -Haste
1. You need to develop the twitch muscles in your arms. One exercise you can do is simply press-ups. Though for this training don't extend the arms fully when you press up. Keep your elbows tight against your body. The objective is to do them fast and in very high repetition. Also remember that the more relaxed your arms are the faster they will be. Here is an example [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geE1fmnoWBM"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geE1fmnoWBM[/ame] The guy in the video is doing them from his knees but you can do them from normal press-up position. 2. Again, fast and with high repetition. This time use training like squats. Hindu squats are great. They will also develop great power in your legs [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaHBnN-HXX0"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaHBnN-HXX0[/ame] Important to remember when doing hindu squats is that it's all about momentum. Your arms should be moving in continuous circle, and once again do them in high repetition. Oddly though I was taught the oppose breathing method than in this video. Warning : Just in case you haven't done any of the exercises I described in 1 and 2 I'll tell you now that your muscles are going to burn, but you must keep going. Again it's important to relax your legs when kicking. When kicking high don't try to lift your leg, swing it up, but keeping proper posture while doing it of course. As for knees, one thing that helped me a lot was focusing on relaxing my ass muscles and just gently swing my knee up. Now I can knee myself in the shoulder when completely cold with almost no effort. I'd be able to knee myself in the face if my belly wasn't there 3. Skipping, dancing and very relaxed shadow boxing. When shadow boxing keep your hips and shoulders rotating a small bit. Also move in and out of range, and circle while maintaining proper fight posture. For "dodging a strike" it's best to use footwork to simply move slightly out of range or circle. You can have great mobility in your upper body but with out good foot work it will only get you so far. Added: I totally forgot the obvious one for speed training...use a speed ball [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yePT6o3rXHI"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yePT6o3rXHI[/ame] Hope this helps. I'm sure others on here will also have training exercises for you. Good luck with your training.
Those Hindu Squats look dangerous... There is a hard impact compressing your knees to an extremely acute angle, you don't do that for the same reason Parkourers don't stick 10ft drops on the legs. It is very bad for your knees. For leg development I advise an exercise I heard as "rabbit kicks"... Stand on one leg, other leg raised at any angle, then rapidly flick your raised shin back/forwards - twitching out your kick over the smallest angle possible as quickly as possible. Aim to improve speed and reduce the arc of your kick over weeks of training. The exercise is used for ACL/PCL/MCL rehabiliatation, training leg muscles (Quad/hamstring) to react as quickly as possible to take strain off ligaments - should be precisely what's needed to aid faster kicks**. **Well, this will train fast quads reaction/alternating ham-quads... Fast kicks but not hard. If you want strength behind each kick you need to work your core with each strike, can't think of a fancy way to help you there except practising kicks.
