[QUOTE=YouKnowWho;1197583]Do you like to train in slow speed or fast speed? Many TKD guys like to train their side kick in extream slow speed. It’s good for balance, endurance, and perfectness. Taiji guys also like to train their form in slow speed. For single move, slow speed training and fast speed training won’t make much different. Both approaches may all get to the same point.
Can you train your
front kick, roundhouse kick, side kick, jab, cross, hook, hook combo
in slow speed?[/QUOTE]
I will shadowbox slowly sometimes to focus on the technical ability of certain combos, and sometimes to develop looseness in movement.
Wow, I didn’t know that was a thing. I thought I invented it, haha.
I have my students do that drill both fast and slow.
I want them to be able to do it fast, but they don’t do it correctly.
They have the wrong weight transfer, no extension, no launch, no agility, no relaxation. Just very frantic rigid motions. And they struggle to get enough speed and distance.
So I have them do it slow while I coach the individual biomechanical details. Ankle, knee, hip, step, center of mass, relaxation, explosiveness, recovery, etc.
And that’s not even upper body yet.
That usually makes them aware of all the missing details, and they do better when I make them go fast again.
NO.
Training in slow speed is great for doing things in slow speed, and new students. If you want to be able to do something properly with speed, under pressure, you had better practice it that way. I cant count how many times Ive had guys come train with me (MMA guys arent immune to this either) that can hit the pads or do their stuff with amazingly good form and power, either slow or with some speed. But as soon they are forced to move quickly, everything goes away: No whole body recruitment, sloppy pawing punches, far less power, etc etc. Doing things quickly utilizes different types of balance, different amounts of forces, and different muscular response; its much harder for the body to maintain whole-body timing in its movement at fast speed than it is slow.
Bobbing and weaving is a perfect example. You can bob and weave well slow and be totally inept at doing it fast. But if you can learn to do it fast, then doing is slow is utterly trivial. Its harder to do things faster, and easier to do it slow. Its strange to me people dont see this is simple common sense. Dont think you get a free pass to getting “to the same point” by just doing it slow and hoping it all comes at all speeds. What a wonderful universe this would be if reality worked like that…But it does not.
Now, that is NOT to say that a student should be forced to move very rapidly before they are ready. What it means is that a student should be forced to move just fast enough that their mechanics start to break down. And then very attentive focus by the instructor should be asserted to fix that deficiency as it happens. Once things are good to go, the student should then be forced to move faster again until that breakdown is again reached…
[QUOTE=PlumDragon;1197594]Its harder to do things faster, and easier to do it slow. [/QUOTE]
Agree with you 100% there. I prefer to have speed and not perfect technique than to have perfect technique but no speed.
When you
train, your shoulder push your elbow, your elbow push your hand.
fight, your shoulder chase your elbow, your elbow chase your hand.
Why?
Because in combat, speed is more important than perfect technique and power. A good product is not it has no defects (perfect technique) but has least defects (not so perfect technique) with the most affordable price (speed).
Speed > perfect technique
A landing 50 lb force on your opponent’s head is better than a non-landing 100 lb force into the thin air.
[QUOTE=YouKnowWho;1197604]Agree with you 100% there. I prefer to have speed and not perfect technique than to have perfect technique but no speed.[/quote]You can have excellent form at a given level of speed and intensity; beyond which, it breaks down quickly. The goal is to continue increasing that level of speed and intensity that you have good form at, so that the form IS good at increasingly higher speeds and intensities.
If you arent training to create the challenge to have both speed and good form…Then what on earth are you spending your time working on?
[QUOTE=YouKnowWho;1197604]When you
train, your shoulder push your elbow, your elbow push your hand.
fight, your shoulder chase your elbow, your elbow chase your hand.
Why?
Because in combat, speed is more important than perfect technique and power.[/QUOTE]If youre not training with the goal of eventually emulating the level of speed and intensity of a real situation, then what precisely are you training for? What could the reason be that you are training one set of body mechanics and fighting with another? How could this possibly be productive from the perspective of a martial artist? What use is your training if youre not even going to use it when you get into an altercation?
[QUOTE=PlumDragon;1197607] What could the reason be that you are training one set of body mechanics and fighting with another? [/QUOTE]
That’s a good question. This is also why I don’t like to mix combat and health in the same discussion. When you train for health in solo, speed is not important. You have all the time in the word to compress to the maximum, release to the maximum in order to generate the maximum power. The problem is when you get used to that kind of “slow speed training”, it’s very hard (if not impossible) to remove your bad habit. Slow is bad habit.
Here is CXW’s fajin clip. Please notice that all his Fajin demo are single move. He did not demo any combo Fajin at all.
The word speed is a relative term and not an absolute term. Oneday I asked my teacher, “What’s lighting speed?” He said, “When you feel that your eye balls are going to fly out of your eye sockets, that’s lighting speed.”
You may be able to do a 3 moves combo within 3 seconds. If you try to finish your 3 moves combo within 1 second, your move won’t be perfect. That’s why I used that fast footwork clip to show that even if you may be able to do it in slow speed, you may not be able to do it in fast speed. The reason is in fast speed, your footwork need some modification. Only after you have trained fast speed, you won’t be able to know what kind of modification will be needed.
Practicing your moves all slow is not a good practice for optimal health either. How about some good cardio? Increase that stroke volume, eh? Stretch, do some yoga, eat well, lift some weights. Trying to fall back on, “doing it slow for health” is, in my personal opinion, just a scape goat.
[QUOTE=YouKnowWho;1197612]You may be able to do a 3 moves combo within 3 seconds. If you try to finish your 3 moves combo within 1 second, your move won’t be perfect.[/quote]Thats why you keep practicing. You have not hit a barrier at 3 moves in 3 seconds. If you keep pushing yourself, it gets faster. And the faster it gets, the easier and more trivial it is to do things below your max.
[QUOTE=YouKnowWho;1197612]That’s why I used that fast footwork clip to show that even if you may be able to do it in slow speed, you may not be able to do it in fast speed.[/quote]Thats what Im saying this whole time. If you can do it fast, doing it slow is easy. If you can do it slow, that doesnt mean you can do it fast. Hence my conclusion that you CANNOT just practice slow. You MUST practice at your breakdown point. If youre not doing that, then I ask you, what are you even training?
[QUOTE=YouKnowWho;1197612]The reason is in fast speed, your footwork need some modification. Only after you have trained fast speed, you won’t be able to know what kind of modification will be needed.[/QUOTE]If your system requires you to alter things to do it fast, then thats all the more reason to NOT do it slow and unrealistically. If you want to do things real-time, under pressure, practice them that way.
Theres no other way to hash it, and really youve just helped me prove my initial assertion…
[QUOTE=PlumDragon;1197614]“doing it slow for health” is, in my personal opinion, just a scape goat…[/QUOTE]
That’s why even if I have had my medicare card, I’m still in favor of my “lighting speed training”. The slow speed training just doesn’t excite me at all.
I’m very interesting the fast footwork as this clip. Sometime I even walk on the street like this.
But as soon they are forced to move quickly, everything goes away: No whole body recruitment, sloppy pawing punches, far less power, etc etc. Doing things quickly utilizes different types of balance, different amounts of forces, and different muscular response; its much harder for the body to maintain whole-body timing in its movement at fast speed than it is slow.
[…]
Now, that is NOT to say that a student should be forced to move very rapidly before they are ready. What it means is that a student should be forced to move just fast enough that their mechanics start to break down. And then very attentive focus by the instructor should be asserted to fix that deficiency as it happens. Once things are good to go, the student should then be forced to move faster again until that breakdown is again reached…[/QUOTE]
IMO. At first and as a structural check throughout whatever training you are doing. Yes.
You want to correctly execute the movement structurally. Which at first may not be comfortable depending on ones’ own bad habits of posture, etc.
One of the purposes of form is to become body aware in that fashion and discover where you are structurally weak and then correct that.
Then execute the techniques and increase speed, then move to devices like wall bags, heavy bag or that sort of thing, check your accuracy combined with structure throughout by using the devices correctly and also by checking your structure and especially in regards to force feedback. Then move it to partner drills doing the same checks along the way and finally to free sparring and again, being conscious of the correct structure along the way. In whatever it is you are training.
After a time you’ll have developed a handful of really useful combos and techniques relative to your style. It only demands as much time as it takes for you to correctly execute a high percentage of the time in the live format of drills or sparring, but the slow process and device work is part and parcel to it.
You should definitely practice slow, as well as fast.
Maintain the Yin and Yang in all things
Why slow?
Because when you practice slowly you can take things to their extreme contortions. When you always punch fast none of your punches will have a 180 degree waist twist. When you do it slow you will be able to get this extreme position. When you do it fast again, you will be able to go further as you have achieved new awareness of your body and new control over the muscles at extreme postions. This applies to many techniques.
But I will never actually use the extreme position? I’ll punch smaller… Doesn’t matter, the fact your muscle can go there gives you a lot more to play with and you would be surprised at the extreme positions you are forced into unexpectedly and suddenly.
Fast combos? There is a minimum threshold for you to be able to change your mind. When you connect the person reacts and his body position changes. If you do a super fast combo, all punching the same target, you cannot use it like this because the target will have moved and you are moving too fast to ‘change’. There is a rhythm. I go as fast as I can but I don’t break my rhythm.
Of course you must practice fast, but don’t neglect the slow as it takes you to new places and teaches you where your technique has flaws. So even at an advanced level I think one should practice both fast and slow.