How to Increase Your Speed for Martial Arts

If you’re looking to increase your speed, you’re not alone! I get more questions about speed and power in the martial arts than any other topics.

I’ve already made a video about increasing power, How to Add Power to Your Punch, so now let’s talk about speed. Here come three quick tips plus one reality check.

If the video won’t play, scroll down for a summary. Happy training!

How to Increase Your Speed for Martial Arts

Let’s start with three quick tips to increase your speed.

First tip: Don’t wind up.

If your fist needs to travel from Point A to Point B, don’t take a detour to Point C. Winding up might actually triple the distance your fist is traveling!

Even if you only wind up a little bit, you’re still adding time to your technique. Don’t do that!

Second tip: Stay loose.

If you get angry or upset, you will be tense. When you’re tense, some of your muscles will try to do their job, while the rest will actually hold you back!

To be fast, you need to keep your temper and emotions in check. Stay cool and stay loose.

Third tip: Practice.

Once you’ve get rid of all that tension and you stop winding up, train your body to only use the muscles you need. Always practice with the goal of making your movements economical and efficient.

Speaking of efficiency, if you haven’t seen my video, How to Kick Faster, click right here.

REALITY CHECK

Let’s get real. No matter how cool you are or how much you practice, you can’t keep getting faster and faster.

At some point, you’re going to hit your limit. As you get older, you’ll be horrified to find out that your limit actually starts to decrease. Trust me on that!

But all is not lost. That’s because even if you can’t increase your speed objectively, you can still increase your speed subjectively.

What the hell does that mean? This short story might help…

I was rolling around with this young whippersnapper the other day. We slapped in and I got to work controlling the distance and keeping him off of me. Then, right as I was starting to feel proud of myself—

AGHH!

The whippersnapper jumped into an arm bar and popped my elbow before I could tap. It took two months for my arm to stop clicking.

How did that happen? I mean, It’s not like I don’t know what an arm bar is. It’s also true that I could have been moving faster to prevent the armbar. But I didn’t!

Why? Because I didn’t think I had to. I was hypnotized! I got tricked into thinking that we were going to keep moving at one fixed speed. But when the other guy realized that one fixed speed wasn’t working, he jumped it up a notch. Recklessly, but effectively.

To be clear—the secret to the young whippersnapper’s success wasn’t his armbar, it was his manipulation of time.

Here’s the good news… you can do that, too!

If you want to make your best move seem faster, set it up by moving slower first.

Like a snake, hypnotize your opponent into thinking you’re only going to move at low speed, then explode! That’s what the pros are doing when they talk about setting the pace of a fight or breaking rhythms.

Maybe you set up with a lazy jab, then fire off a wicked cross. In the context of self-defense, maybe you use your words to lull your attacker into a false sense of confidence, then suddenly make your move.

If you mix up your timing, you can mix up the other guy’s mind… and that can make you appear to be much faster than you really are.

The point is, when it comes to speed, you shouldn’t just focus on how fast you can move, you should practice setting up your moves so the other guy doesn’t see them coming. Become a master of manipulating time.

My recommendation is to practice your favorite moves and combinations at a variety of speeds. Don’t just throw techniques at full power and full speed! Set a rhythm, then break it.

The fact is, no matter how fast you can move, if you only attack at one fixed speed, you become predictable… and predictable means beatable. Think of it this way—

Your goal isn’t to be as fast as you can be, it’s just to be fast enough to get the job done.

Believe me, as you get older, focusing on speed and power is pure madness anyway. Your body can’t take it. The smarter project is to become clever and tricky… diabolical even!

So, be smart. Train yourself to set rhythms, break rhythms, and manipulate time. Hypnotize your opponent and you should have all the speed you need.