Increase Karate Speed

[shotokan]

How do you increase speed in your karate? For example: I wanna have a really fast reverse punch! How do I achieve this?

 

Thanks

[Eye of the Tiger]

To increase speed in your techniques you should do plenty of body weight pushups on fists. Use weights like a medicine ball and do the movement in the waist that you do when doing a reverse punch. When you take off the ball you will see that nafter having your waist under a resistance it will now move a lot faster. There are loads of ways of gaining speed.

[G95champ]

practice

[Red J]

practice

 

...and practice some more.

[Mutated Kid]

Yes if you want speed practice the technique right. Then once you can do it right practice doing it really fast with correct form.

[KarateTips]

A good drill for improving the speed and power of your reverse punch is as follows. This method of resistance training builds strength, speed and power.

 

Things you need -

 

1 ) An inner tube from a bicycle tyre.

 

2 ) Something to tie it to or a partner to hold one end.

 

Procedure -

 

1 ) Cut the tube once so you have one long piece.

 

2 ) Tie the tube to itself so you make a loop at one end.

 

3 ) Tie the other end to something solid that will not move or have your partner hold it.

 

4 ) Put your punching hand through the loop you made and make a fist.

 

5 ) Make your stance at a distance where the tube is tight, but still can be stretched with your partner behind you holding the other end.

 

6 ) Make your reverse punch slowly with good technique ensuring you are driving forward so your body weight remains behind your punch.

 

7 ) You should feel resistance from the tube. If you don't feel resistance, move forward (away from your partner) until you cannot make the punch to full extension. Then back off a little until you can. The tension of the tube should provide enough resistance to make the punch difficult but not impossible for you.

 

8 ) Once at the correct distance, increase the speed of your technique and practice say 10 - 20 times. Repeat 3 times.

 

9 ) Practice this every day and you will build the exact muscles you need to increase the speed and power of your punch.

 

Remember this is just one way to increase speed and power based on increasing the muscles required to punch.

 

Hope this helps,

[SaiFightsMS]

Punching out a candle flame is also and effective method of increasing punching speed.

[Eye of the Tiger]

soz got that wrong, fist push ups is one way to become strong in that range of movement (punch). The best way in my opinion is what I use and thats wrist/ankle weights. Strap them on and perfom kata or indivbidual technique SLOWLY and then ttake them off and see how fast your techniques are. I do five sets of katae with them on my qwrists and five sets round my ankle and after that I do kata without any weights and see the speed of my techniques come alive.

 

Also do plyometric movements to increase explosive mucsles in the lower body which is very useful so you can move easily from stance to stance.

 

Hindu jumper squats are excellent for building explosivness (power) in the legs or just hindu squats are great.

[ZakariRu]

Do lots and lots of reverse punch drills =)

 

Against a person

 

if you do them in the air or on non moving bag

 

your just practicing technique.

 

Ive found the best way for me to develope my kumite speed is to work on my timing at the same time.

 

The way i have under belts and kids (i should get my instructor to let hte adult bb do this too)

 

Is to have them step in and move there hands back (like a butter fly) and hte other side attack at that moment. after awhile of obvious triggers for the reverese punch go to harder ones to spot like stepping in a certain distance or a backfist. (if i had more people around id do this at my level 250 times aday......)

 

How i train most of my counter attacks.

 

95% of the speed of the top WKF compeitiors is timing

 

Biamonti, Kotaka, Benetello are fast. But they look a hundred times faster because they always know what to throw and when to throw it.

[brickman]

Zakariru is right on target. However, it is good to practice technique in a mirror too...to see if you can detect your own flaws. Having people attack you is great....timing is everything. With timing, even slow guys look fast.