Page 21 - Sports Energy News, Cornwall, Issue No 60

www.sportsenergynews.com Issue #60 November 2017 21

The Attributes: Speed

to develop offensive speed and drills to help with becoming faster
By Jim Riddell, defensively. For offensive training there are various focus pad
Seaway Karate Club and paddle drills, mirror and kicking drills all designed to increase
agility, hand and foot speed.

Now let’s take a look at the defensive side of things starting with
everal times in previous issues I have mentioned the term reaction time. Reaction time is defined as the length of time from
S“attributes” when referring to things karate related. The attributes your first perception of a stimulus until you react to it. A prime
are the skill related components that are required to be proficient at example of the stimulus is an incoming punch during a self- defence
a specified sport. During the first year or two of karate training a situation. Several things have to happen in a very, very short period
student learns many of the basics such as kicks, punches, strikes, of time to enable you to prevent you from being struck. You have
self-defence, etc., and the improvement will have been considerable. to be able to: 1) perceive the threat, 2) analyse it and narrow your
After that time the student will continue to develop, learning new responses down to just one, 3) tell your muscles how to respond.
katas, more techniques and expand into speciality training, but to Here is where the difference between being naturally fast and
physically improve each of the attributes will have to be targeted having a trained response come into play. The naturally fast person
FPO
separately. will instinctively jerk their head back from the punch whereas the
There are many drills for each of the individual attributes that will individual with the trained response will slip the punch and counter
keep classes challenging and exciting. Of all the attributes that it. If you want to get good at reacting to punches and kicks you need
are required for karate, speed is arguably the most important and to train by looking at them and learn how to sense the incoming
definitely the most complex. Speed goes hand and hand with agility threat ahead of time. Working various partner drills over a period of
and is the ability to move quickly, performing techniques as rapidly time will enable you to pick up subtle clues as to what type of kick
as possible while also maintaining balance and muscular control. or punch may be coming your way. The good news is that even if
It is very important to keep the muscles loose as tight muscles will you weren’t genetically blessed with natural speed, you can still get
slow down your reaction time. A few other factors that will slow faster. If you have the ability to play a video game or send off rapid
you down are tight clothing, emotional stress, flexibility, and cold fire texts on a cell phone you have the instinctive ability to react and
temperature. To make it even more complicated there are drills your speed will improve with training.

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