Interesting explanation of improving speed!

Check this video out. Please bear with it. The trainer makes an excellent point about the 'speed' of the punch relating to not telegraphing the punch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdPP0TmqKiU

Here is my question to you guys:

Is there a training tool/device that I can use to help tighten my guard? My elbows flare out and I telegraph my punches with slight lateral elbow movement. I was thinking.... can I work on footwork drills with a soccor ball between my forarms? Or is there a rubber band that I can use to help cinch them in so the forarms are perpendicular to the floor?

You would be surprised, how a few stretches solve the problem. Its all down to bad alinement of the muscles in the upper back and shoulders. Bad maintainance and technique give the wrong messages. Over time muscles reacts to the first memory they have, more so if its the only one. Its all about practising good technique.

what would be a favorable stretch to target this area?

I guess I could use a band, attach it to a post on the side of me, stand in a proper stance and have the tension of the band pull my wrist to the outside? This seems to stretch the shoulder area as long as I keep the elbow pointed at the floor. Is this wise?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqxzN18rcV0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJMl0HZU8qc&feature=related

I like this thread. When i watch some of the great KO artists i think just of that... No one sees it coming. Typical is for example for George Foreman. When i watch him from the side he seems slow, but the boxers in the ring think something different... With the fights of Joe Louis is even more fun. The boxers stay in there like hit from a bold... They know that the punches are coming, but its always "What the heck was that". They both punched with the elbol inside and use this murderous shovel hooks... I think that the problem of our generation is that we are abuse (most of us at least) and this stops us of staying thight, compact and all punches become haymakers. The common thinking is: the biger the better... But as a result we end up looking just silly. We eat our graves :(

Thanks for the routine.

I like that fitball arm stretch. Never tried it. Gonna give it a go tonight.

I agree with Nikola, Joe Louis is a perfect example of those types of punches. Short, straight shots with no telegraph with the elbow in. No sense in having fast hands if you have bad technique, right?

GIMC, do yourself a favour they work in tandem those 2 stretches. The stick opens the Pectorials, important for protecting the shoulder joint, and helps its mobility.Also helps it support the back, and gives flexability all round.

[Nothing I am going to write below is in conflict with what is say above (by Scrap etc) so please consider it IN ADDITION...]

Research in the last few years is now being publicized explaining how "speed" of reaction is actually obtained in sports and how any type of "talent" can be created. To a great degree reacting to a tennis serve is mainly dependent on having the perceptual circuits trained to SEE where the ball is going even before it is hit (while in the ball is in the air, racquet is moving towards it etc).

It's not primarily a raw speed issue, but a perception/reaction. Weird thing is that even though there is something very similar in Ping Pong (table tennis) the two talents don't really overlap -- each must be trained separately to work at a pro level.

Although none of this research seems to have looked at boxing directly, it is practically certain that such will apply to boxing as well.

There are very specific methods to train such skills.

The books you want to read are: "The Talent Code" by Daniel Coyle, "Bounce" by Matthew Syed, "Talent is OverRated" by Geoffrey Colvin, etc.

These are going to be life changing books for a lot of people, especially among athletes and coaches.

"Deep" or "Deliberate" Practice is the key idea.

"The Talent Code" is probably the most complete with both coverage of Deep Practice and various Master Coaching strategies (as well as "ignition"). "Bounce" may be the best read and has more info (so read both), and there is extra specific information on designing training strategies in "Talent is Overrated".

This is important stuff -- remember you heard if from me first (and if you didn't then why didn't you TELL ME?)

--
Herb

Very interesting herb im going to look those books up, a very interesting subject speed, so whats the principles behind the ''deep'' or ''deliberate'' practice? whats your conclusion having read the books? cmon herb enlighten us :) im very interested to hear what you think having read the books. im a big believer in feel, like scrap says people can react better/quicker to feel, failing having the experience to spot somthing even the most inexperienced people will have a much quicker reaction to somthing if you can get feel involved.

a good example would be when i used to work the doors in clubs, i always used to notice that the reaction of the doormen i worked with wasnt quite so good in some situations where as a boxer myself i would have been on the back foot waiting to choose a reaction, often this doorman was not able to read the situation like i felt i could. as soon as i saw a movement that my experience could help determine as a strike in the same situation im more used to reacting to a punch because im more firmiliar with spotting the initial movements that are made to build up the momentum for a strike so i would know to react sharpish through experience of using my eyes to recognize the developing strike.
similair situation same doorman i noticed he had a hold of this lads arms just infront of his torso at the wrists, this guy totally relaxed and drunk (not displaying usual bodylanguage before attacking someone lol) suddenly tried to punch then headbut the guy (was very sloppy didnt turn the punch over lol joking) i was working with and in this situation i noticed his reactions to the movements where much quicker maybe not the better choice of reactions but the overall speed of his reaction was much, much better than when he relied on his eyes to process all the information around him while being able to spot any trouble he might find himself in. when scrap says that the eyes are what fucks everything up. i believe this is what this subject is maybe about herb? maybe its more of getting used to using our eyes as they seem to be a bit weak compared to feel in terms of reaction speed and compensating through experience to get the best from our eyes, so its like practicing digging a hole with a big folk if you get me? a shovel would be much better but if a folk is all you have at certain times you better get good at digging with it.

The way i see it when you break down what people refer to as speed it usually involves 3 or more different kinds of speed, boxing for example there is speed of perception, seeing somthing and noticing it quickley, then next comes the reaction to the perception the speed involved in this stage is to do with selecting the best suited reaction to the situation what you have percieved, then finally comes the physical speed which is what scraps stretches are all about, like you would service a sports car regularly to maintain optimal performance your body is no different, a weak spot or malfunction anywhere will have a snowball effect on the performance of the system as a whole, creating more problems further down the line throughout the whole system if left untreated, the result is consistent injuries due to imbalances.

I remember watching a very interesting documentary about sight and somthing called blind sight, everybody has it even blind people can still have what science refers to as 'blind sight' the best example of this to give is when driving along and maybe not paying quite as much attention as you should, we all do it, we sort of switch to auto pilot to rest our eyes, say we are in the middle of a discussion while i am driving and im deep in conversation not paying full attention to the road, somthing happens on the road that suddenly snaps my attention back to the road and away from the disscusion lets say a child chasing a ball quite close to the road. it is blind sight that told me there was a developing hazard rather than the fact that my eyes/concentration were on the road carefully scanning whats going on, its a survival thing that all creatures use no matter how different their sight to ours its what helps a fly navigate/avoid objects at high speed the fly gets more FPS (frames per second) compared to us but there is a trade off in detail for the extra FPS, add to this great workload of information to process a predator trying to catch the fly say like a frog, at these fps detail is lost so its not usual eyesight which helps the fly avoid being caught, its blind sight. when the eyes are too inefficient to process all information this is the backup system, im going to stop here because ill just go on and on, interesting thread to say the least ;D

Interestingly, talking to football coaches this month on Genius in the young as regards being born with the talent. It seems its developed by circumstance i found it interesting.

I saw a documentary on the brain and what makes personality. it seemed to be supporting the same idea scrap, every situation and circumstance youve ever been in determines everything about you from how you think to your personality and your dress sense, very interesting documentary i watched it a few times.

with regards to the video, would you advocate a jab using the elbow or one from the shoulder? it seems like he is saying the 'from the elbow' jab is a straighter shot with no telepgraph.

Sorry, what i was saying and didnt explain, I got a terrible habit of assuming the obvious. The direction of the punch, The jab in this case, what moves most is the elbow. What directs it is the shoulder and back muscles. If they are not working as they should, it causes the elbow to lift, youre giving signals of intent. If the shoulders are working as they should this shouldnt happen,thats why i put those stretches up, it stops that happening

I think I gotcha Mr. Scrap. The elbow, shoulder and back working in concert with the elbow pointed down through most of the movement with little or no lateral lift (flare) of the elbow.

I didnt realize how bad my technique was until I did that jab against a wall exercise you pointed out in another thread. Quite an eye opener!

One other point, the most important regarding speed. Its the Head, it controls everything regarding speed, mobility comes from it all the essensial senses for direction of movement are transmitted from above the neck. Its posture and position gives the Body the clues to adjust its posture and balance to transport it. Understand that youve cracked it ;D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by WayneFlint

Very interesting herb im going to look those books up, a very interesting subject speed, so whats the principles behind the ''deep'' or ''deliberate'' practice?

whats your conclusion having read the books? cmon herb enlighten us :) im very interested to hear what you think having read the books.

im a big believer in feel, like scrap says people can react better/quicker to feel, failing having the experience to spot somthing even the most inexperienced people will have a much quicker reaction to somthing if you can get feel involved.

...

The way i see it when you break down what people refer to as speed it usually involves 3 or more different kinds of speed, boxing for example there is speed of perception, seeing somthing and noticing it quickley, then next comes the reaction to the perception the speed involved in this stage is to do with selecting the best suited reaction to the situation what you have percieved, then finally comes the physical speed which is what scraps stretches are all about, ...

I remember watching a very interesting documentary about sight and somthing called blind sight, ... ;D

---

WayneFlint, you seem to be on track with all of this.

First: My reaction to the books -- my specially in life is Learning How To Learn both for myself and others. This is THE thing I do best of all, and I have made a lot of money showing people how to do this (so there is a lot of outside evidence that I am good at it) and yet I didn't know all of this stuff explicitly.

Don't get me wrong: A lot of people will read one of these books and have the reaction, "Oh, I knew all of that" and then miss the detail and full value. I knew some of it to some extent but these books make it absolutely explicit and usable for actual training design.

Bottom line: The research and book are (almost completely) correct.

Several key components to "Deep Practice"

• Get the whole picture first (i.e., know where you are going and what the result will look like when you get there, e.g., watch pro's do it)
• Chunk it down into learnable components (e.g., practice parries),
• SLOW it down (practice just fast enough to be on the edge of success/failure, neither to easy nor too hard)
• Join the chunks together smoothly and speed up so that you are never finding it "easy" nor impossible to perform
• Immediate feedback -- build the practice so that you can immediately tell if you are succeeding or not
• Build the above practice so that you can get in HIGH VOLUME (thousands) of repetitions -- design to reduce the dead time or gaps between practice reps, especially on the key elements (e.g., practice tennis serve by hitting entire BASKETS of tennis balls, use pitching machines in baseball to get thousands of chances at bat, high volume footwork or parrying in boxing)
• Concentrate on getting it right -- deep mental involvement

There is perhaps more, and the above is just about "Deep Practice" there is more on the concepts of "Master Coaching" and "Ignition" (how to ignite a participant, a team, or a whole group of young people so that they achieve both enthusiasm for practice and eventual success).

Reading the books is a necessity (I can't shorten it much, without writing my own book) and well worth the time. You will learn real practical material from each and EVERY one of them, but if you are like me you will still be searching for more (right now I have started ANOTHER book that covers this material, "The Genius in All of Us".

You are absolutely correct about there being multiple components to "speed" (at least 3 probably more):

No amount of pure 'exercise' will ever train the "speed of perception" and that may be the most important component. This is one that is almost always sports (and even context) specific. People who are not "tennis pros" don't even "see" (or process) what is necessary to get into position to return a tennis serve.

(And blind sight is related here as well.)

Then you must train the "response" neural networks to fire off the correct physical response AND to coordinate that response as well as continued feedback you are receiving so as to make the final adjustments.

And yes, the PURE "speed of the muscle" is another. Turns out that this last one is far less important that we thought. E.g., The guy who was KNOWN for being the fastest Table Tennis player on the British Team had the slowest response times (to computer generated exercises.) This isn't unimportant; it is just that being AHEAD of the game with perception is far more key.

On the concept of "feel" many of these "Deep Practice" exercises will be specifically designed to BUILD that feel in the shortest time and with the least practice possible.

But a word of warning and ENCOURAGEMENT:

As exciting as these books are and as powerful as they will be in helping you learn better and faster, you will will need to design exercises and practice strategies and DO THE WORK. Lots and lot of repetitions.

They important difference is that you will be wasting very little time if you do it this way.

You may even find such practice to be less fun (at times) or more tiring -- this is because you will be stretching your capabilities and building new ones a higher percentage of your practice time.

Currently I am designing (and redesigning) ALL of my own practice and my students' practice through explicitly using the models of "Deep Practice", "Master Coaching", and "Ignition".

--
HerbM

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HerbM

Quote:

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Originally Posted by WayneFlint

Very interesting herb im going to look those books up, a very interesting subject speed, so whats the principles behind the ''deep'' or ''deliberate'' practice?

whats your conclusion having read the books? cmon herb enlighten us :) im very interested to hear what you think having read the books.

im a big believer in feel, like scrap says people can react better/quicker to feel, failing having the experience to spot somthing even the most inexperienced people will have a much quicker reaction to somthing if you can get feel involved.

...

The way i see it when you break down what people refer to as speed it usually involves 3 or more different kinds of speed, boxing for example there is speed of perception, seeing somthing and noticing it quickley, then next comes the reaction to the perception the speed involved in this stage is to do with selecting the best suited reaction to the situation what you have percieved, then finally comes the physical speed which is what scraps stretches are all about, ...

I remember watching a very interesting documentary about sight and somthing called blind sight, ... ;D

---

WayneFlint, you seem to be on track with all of this.

First: My reaction to the books -- my specially in life is Learning How To Learn both for myself and others. This is THE thing I do best of all, and I have made a lot of money showing people how to do this (so there is a lot of outside evidence that I am good at it) and yet I didn't know all of this stuff explicitly.

Don't get me wrong: A lot of people will read one of these books and have the reaction, "Oh, I knew all of that" and then miss the detail and full value. I knew some of it to some extent but these books make it absolutely explicit and usable for actual training design.

Bottom line: The research and book are (almost completely) correct.

Several key components to "Deep Practice"

• Get the whole picture first (i.e., know where you are going and what the result will look like when you get there, e.g., watch pro's do it)
• Chunk it down into learnable components (e.g., practice parries),
• SLOW it down (practice just fast enough to be on the edge of success/failure, neither to easy nor too hard)
• Join the chunks together smoothly and speed up so that you are never finding it "easy" nor impossible to perform
• Immediate feedback -- build the practice so that you can immediately tell if you are succeeding or not
• Build the above practice so that you can get in HIGH VOLUME (thousands) of repetitions -- design to reduce the dead time or gaps between practice reps, especially on the key elements (e.g., practice tennis serve by hitting entire BASKETS of tennis balls, use pitching machines in baseball to get thousands of chances at bat, high volume footwork or parrying in boxing)
• Concentrate on getting it right -- deep mental involvement

There is perhaps more, and the above is just about "Deep Practice" there is more on the concepts of "Master Coaching" and "Ignition" (how to ignite a participant, a team, or a whole group of young people so that they achieve both enthusiasm for practice and eventual success).

Reading the books is a necessity (I can't shorten it much, without writing my own book) and well worth the time. You will learn real practical material from each and EVERY one of them, but if you are like me you will still be searching for more (right now I have started ANOTHER book that covers this material, "The Genius in All of Us".

You are absolutely correct about there being multiple components to "speed" (at least 3 probably more):

No amount of pure 'exercise' will ever train the "speed of perception" and that may be the most important component. This is one that is almost always sports (and even context) specific. People who are not "tennis pros" don't even "see" (or process) what is necessary to get into position to return a tennis serve.

(And blind sight is related here as well.)

Then you must train the "response" neural networks to fire off the correct physical response AND to coordinate that response as well as continued feedback you are receiving so as to make the final adjustments.

And yes, the PURE "speed of the muscle" is another. Turns out that this last one is far less important that we thought. E.g., The guy who was KNOWN for being the fastest Table Tennis player on the British Team had the slowest response times (to computer generated exercises.) This isn't unimportant; it is just that being AHEAD of the game with perception is far more key.

On the concept of "feel" many of these "Deep Practice" exercises will be specifically designed to BUILD that feel in the shortest time and with the least practice possible.

But a word of warning and ENCOURAGEMENT:

As exciting as these books are and as powerful as they will be in helping you learn better and faster, you will will need to design exercises and practice strategies and DO THE WORK. Lots and lot of repetitions.

They important difference is that you will be wasting very little time if you do it this way.

You may even find such practice to be less fun (at times) or more tiring -- this is because you will be stretching your capabilities and building new ones a higher percentage of your practice time.

Currently I am designing (and redesigning) ALL of my own practice and my students' practice through explicitly using the models of "Deep Practice", "Master Coaching", and "Ignition".

--
HerbM

---

Interesting thread with many components.

Why do you suppose many fighters cant 'let go of their hands' so to speak?

We've all seen this problem arise on fight night.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Andre

...
Interesting thread with many components.

Why do you suppose many fighters cant 'let go of their hands' so to speak?

We've all seen this problem arise on fight night.

---

Caveat: I am not an expert boxing coach and have only limited experience with this issue (mostly making sure it doesn't happen to me) so much of the following is "best guess".

Several causes jump to mind, but we would need to observe and talk to the actual fighter to see if these are the actual reasons -- and there might be more, or a combination of these:

1. Failure to relax (poor training, fear, nervousness, trying to hard)
2. Over-thinking (not the normal planning and scheming but getting involved with the actual mechanics of moving, punching, etc)
3. Trying to hit harder than in training -- forcing the motion
4. Breathing issues, fatigue (similar to #1 and might be inter-relaated)

The book "Bounce" talks about the phenomenon of "clutching" which might be separate or related to the above.

State management is a very important method to avoid some or all of the above. NLP can be very helpful with this, especially using anchoring.

I would start with relaxing while hitting (since almost everybody has issues here), especially if it happens in sparring and not just in competition. Breathing too.

Then try to figure out which of these is causing the changes from practice to being stressed....
--
HerbM

Of interestive mentioned this before. I had a kid in the gym he was sharp, not the sharpest but up there with the best. One day the Sports Council came, they were testing speed of reflex.Tested all the Lads who were great Fighters British champs 6 of them, plus this other Lad. When the testing was done they asked this Lad to take the test again, they thought something had gone wrong :o. After they announced this Lad had the fastest reflexs ever recorded 1/6000 of a second. He never qiute made it, He wanted it that much the Boxing, He just couldnt produce it in a fight. The nerves got to Him, we tried everything even Hypnosis,but to no avail.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Scrap

Of interestive mentioned this before. I had a kid in the gym he was sharp, not the sharpest but up there with the best. One day the Sports Council came, they were testing speed of reflex.Tested all the Lads who were great Fighters British champs 6 of them, plus this other Lad. When the testing was done they asked this Lad to take the test again, they thought something had gone wrong :o. After they announced this Lad had the fastest reflexs ever recorded 1/6000 of a second. He never qiute made it, He wanted it that much the Boxing, He just couldnt produce it in a fight. The nerves got to Him, we tried everything even Hypnosis,but to no avail.

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Based on what I now know about training (from the material above), I am totally convinced we could have designed exercises for him that would have easily converted this natural ability into actual boxing tallent -- or pretty much talent for any other sport reaction.

Of course, I cannot prove this to be true, but this is specifically what these books on talent have proclaimed.

The trick is designing sports specific training elements for each of the key areas, then linking them together to make the complete package.

Most people are likely wasting (over) half of their training time. (Actually most are likely wasting close to 90%, but I was really talking about the good ones who may reach the top.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Scrap

Of interestive mentioned this before. I had a kid in the gym he was sharp, not the sharpest but up there with the best. One day the Sports Council came, they were testing speed of reflex.Tested all the Lads who were great Fighters British champs 6 of them, plus this other Lad. When the testing was done they asked this Lad to take the test again, they thought something had gone wrong :o. After they announced this Lad had the fastest reflexs ever recorded 1/6000 of a second. He never qiute made it, He wanted it that much the Boxing, He just couldnt produce it in a fight. The nerves got to Him, we tried everything even Hypnosis,but to no avail.

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This dude is fast. ;)


Fastest Gunman Ever - YourDailyMedia.com

Herb, dont think so ;D