How to Be a Master of Speed in the Martial Arts!
I don’t care how much size and bulk the other guy has, if you are a master of speed, then you are going to win. If he throws a big, fat, heavy punch, you are fast enough to block or just step out of the way. If you throw a punch, it is faster than his slow, lumbering blocks.
Do you know how important speed can be in the martial arts? Yet, the sad fact is that nobody ever teaches people the techniques of how to have speed. Nobody ever teaches you the specialized knowledge that result in your becoming able to move your body fast enough to handle absolutely anything.
To be honest, to took me nearly seven years of dedicated discipline and practice to become fast in the martial arts. That’s seven years of forms and techniques and freestyle and bruises and work and exhaustion. And I knew there had to be a better way.
I first became fast through the first move of the form Botsai. That is the move where you do a triple block, and the body protests because you are trying to make it do large movements to handle simple movements. And that concept is one of the keys to becoming faster.
Simply, if you absolutely and positively have to do something…then you will. So in Bot Sai somebody is firing three simply punches at me, and I have to respond with three large circles of the body, complete with hip twisting. I have to do it, and, practice enough, and I am able to do it.
So to get faster the old way, you have to set up a problem to be solved, then train your body over a period of time. And I saw similar methods utilized in other arts. And I saw some arts which went for the simple movements, but then they lost out on the hips and generation of power.
But I did realize something crucial in this matter of speed through my experience and observations in the traditional arts, and that something is commonly termed visualization. Assume a posture, be there and only there, and forget about being anywhere else. When you have forgotten the posture you are in enough, be in another position, and don’t have any thought or effort in between the two postures.
The idea here is to take out the ideas of weight and movement that is inherent in the way you move your body. Be here…then be there, and don’t have anything in between. It’s a zen approach to the practice of the martial arts, and it still takes some work, but by backing up your Karate sweat with a bit of mental attention and intention, it is possible to speed up your hands in months instead of years.
Al Case has studied martial arts for 4O+ years. You can find out about Mastering Speed and other theories he has developed over the years by picking up a free ebook at Monster Martial Arts.
Article source:Slim Index