Although martial arts is complex with many combinations and skills that take our whole life to be able to use, its application in real life is much simpler.
I guess some of you watched a viral video of a professional boxer (probably) who can knock out 3-4 people within a second (each dude receive only 1 punch).
The point I want to tell you here is that we all learn many things from the trainer, we work and train extremely hard, however, our resource always is limited (time, money and health). Therefore, it is much better if you know how to allocate our power to make a pike.
All the things we should do are to maximize our favorite/forte skills coming with exploiting potential weight, height, and endurability of our body.
I am going to break down the quickness into 2 sections. The first is the movement which is footwork and body reaction. The second is the reflexion.
Movement
Before I start the lesson, let me clarify that the movement and the reflexion have to be incorporated into each other. The reflexion function from your brain realizes some threat and then activate our muscle against the dangers. After receiving the dangerous signal, the body will deliver appropriate action.
Why should we start with movement firstly? Because Practicing skills, again and again, creates something called “muscle memory”. You should perform your techniques daily until those movements flow into your vein. (I mean you are able to punch without thinking)
Not to mention the importance of the footwork. Our lower body is much more difficult and painful to be trained than the upper one. Maybe it is far from the brain (I guess).
Here are some tips to improve your movement:
1. Improve your endurance and stability by doing high-intensity training as insanity. This workout gives you a foundation to move on.
2. After that, working on agility training is extremely important. The agility session makes your body flexible enough to dodge and invade easily.
3. Involve training plyometric exercises that can increase your punch and kick’s acceleration. It is similar to a horse exploding out of the gate.
Reflexion
Improving reflexion is a process to raise the level of self-awareness and then translating to actions. This can help us to overcome unease that we experience internally.
The training itself is a method to improve your reflexion. Another way and the best way is to involve in a real fight. When you face some threats, your brain will be stimulated to work maximum.
Learn to stop thinking: it is actually the right reflexion and our ultimate goal to achieve. In the fight, you have no time to think and a punch should be thrown appropriately within a second. By a long time of practicing, the techniques will live with our body as a part of our life that is called muscle memory.
This kind of memory as a shield system can be activated at any time you get a threat.
Note: There is still 1 thoughts process involving into the battle that we have to analyze our opponent, then doing judgment to conduct the next movement. This thinking is different from the one mentioned above.
If you have to think, then it is not the reflexion anymore.
Conclusion
We are not plants that swing in the wind, we were born to smell, touch, hear and thinking with stimuli. Everything can be improved gradually. The only difficult point is dedication and patience that how much pain and burden you can carry. Overcoming those milestones with your smart method will make you always better than the day before.