Interesting explanation of improving speed!

[Scrap]

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

[HerbM]

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, ...

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

[Andre]

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, ...

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.

[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.

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

[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 . 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.

[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 . 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.

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.)

[Andre]

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 . 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.

This dude is fast.


Fastest Gunman Ever - YourDailyMedia.com

[Scrap]

Herb, dont think so