how to develop speed posted by buddie

Subject:
From: buddie
Date: 27-Jun-01 | 02:30 PM

contrary to what some ignorant and uniformed idiots will tell you, you can develop speed. Just as you can develop strength.

Here are some tips on how to first gain speed and how to beat speed.

Lose weight. It may seem obvious to some, but if you carry too much mass your body will react more slowly than at ideal lean body ratio. Ideal body fat percentages on males is about 7%. Be careful trying to lose too much weight. The most you'll shoot for losing is 2-3 lbs. a week in a healthy manner. Also if you have excess muscle mass you'll become slower, more larger something's mass is the more gravitational pull it has. Keep your reps high in the weight room and watch your fat intake.

Lift ballistic. Keep your reps high and your movements fast. While it true slow reps will develop your slow twich muscle fibers, fast reps will help trigger your fast twitch fibers. Explode up! Keep the weight controlled and your form tight. Your form is bound to be a little sloppier going fast, just don't get dangerous. If you are doing things like jump squats and you choose to use a barbell make certain the barbell never leaves your shoulder blades.

Use plyometrics, they are the best way to develop short explosive movements.

Sprint. Sprinting is an anerobic exercise, meaning it won't directly improve your cardiovascular fitness. What it will do however is make you quicker by targeting those fast twitch fibers. Vary distance when you sprint and work on starting in a 3 point block stance. This will help with that explosiveness even more as your first "push step" will really do wonders for your speed.

Work faster. At the end of every round for the last 30 seconds, go as fast as you can. If your jumping rope, pick it up! GO as fast as you can for the last 30 seconds with your knees high. IF you are on a bag hit it with as many 1-2 combos as you can for 30 seconds without stopping. Your pivot won't be there because you are constantly moving. Just make sure your hands aren't dropping. If you are sparring throw as many flurries to try and learn to steal a round at the finish as possible.

do intervals- interval training helps your body learn to react more quickly. Precor, Stair master, most treadmill and stationary bikes have a interval training section on the machine. Use them.

Use suppliments. Certain suppliments help your reaction time. For example creatine helps the production of ATP, the substance your body uses for short intense bursts of energy. Caffene has also been shown to imporve reaction time. There are others, but be careful, many of these will help with your reaction time, but not with your endurance. A much bigger problem for young boxers is exhaustion and not lack of sspeed. Think, no matter what there is someone out there faster than you, someone stronger, someone with a better chin, with better technique or more knowledge or a bigger punch. But the one thing you can control is how good of shape you are in. Come in in good shape and when he's tried later in the rounds, things tend to even out much more. How did Billy Conn hang with, and out box Joe Louis for most of their first fight? He was smaller but Louis was clearly (despite what some people would have you believe) very fast. Conn came in in supurb shape. He threw a large volume of punches. When someone is being hit, there is no way for them to hit you back. If you can throw 4 punches to their 1, and still look fresher no matter how much faster they are, they are going to lose that battle.

Learn to time things and realx. You can jab with someone much faster than yourself. You just have to learn to work angles, watch the shoulders, relax and punch between. If you can become very good at parrying you can throw off your opponents rythm. Learn to counter. If he's too fast for that, pin him against the ropes and work his body, that will slow him down a bunch. Muscle him, learn to cut him off, don't give him the space to work. Bang him to the body. Someone is much slower if they are trapped on the ropes. If you can cut someone off by understanding angles, he spends more time trying to play ring around the rosy tahan you do. You cut the angle off and you are already there. Boxing is very much about position in a lot of instances.

Use big gloves. I don't like the idea of punching with weights because it makes you form bad habbits, and its hell on your rotator cuffs. But using big 16 or 20 (if you can find them) oz. gloves on certain excercises (like the heavy bag) are going to make your hands feel like they are flying later.

don't bounce too much. Guys who spend all day bouncing up and down have to wait for their feet to touch the ground before they can punch and move. Many amateurs who want to box and look light on their feet and pretty waste time and energy with an excessive bounce. You can shift weight without ever having to leave the canvas. A guy who's bouncing is easy to hit. Forget the bouncing.

Use your jab. A solid jab can take away a lot of advantages a faster man sometimes has. It blinds him and keeps him busy. If you are losing the jabbing contest, you are likely losing the war. If he's faster, throw your jab often and something right behind it. Weather it be another jab, or a right hand, or a hard punch to the body. Have purpouse in your movement. Don't let him keep leading you around, learn to brush, and counter or jab with him and cut him off. You can disrupt someone's rythm by effectively jabbing with him.

Lets get dirty- learn to distract him and make him fight your game. If I fought someone faster than me, I would learn to step on his feet, rough him up with elbows, hit him low when the ref couldn't see, bull him into the corner. Push him, muscle him. If you step of his feet, and nail him, is his fast ass going to get out of the way? I don't think so. Get him out of his game plan and mad. If you can make someone mad, he'll tense up making him slower and throwing his timing off.

Work the body. You can shake them off to the head, but not to the body fellas. If you are heavy handed, whack him in the body every single chance you get, if you get him along the corner or on the ropes, or in a clinch, put your hands on his body.

Learn to brush well, If you can brush it'll open up new counters for you. If you can see the punches coming but you aren't fast enough to get out of the way, learn to brush. Its a very short and small movement and if he's using a lot of energy throwing lots of fast punches and you can bat them down, he has to spend time bringing them back up. This is your chance to counter. Besides that, if your hands are constantly being batted down, you get tired after a while of bringing them up.

Punch him in the chest. The head can move much faster than the body. If you can't find his head, aim for his chest, you'll hit something. If you can hit him under the heart, he'll be froze for a minute. If you can hit him in the chest you can come back with a hard punch to the solar plexus.

Don't get stuck in cement. If you want to punch and he wants to box, he's going to keep you moving. He's going to try and circle and keep your turning. This is why its especially important to be effectively agressive. Learn the foot work of cutting a man off, so he can't keep you off balance. You must control the tempo to beat a fast boxer.

If he moves straight back, crack him. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. So he'll be moving back and hitting you with jabs and right hands. But as he steps straight back, learn to throw a long left hook, not where he his, but where he's going to be. If you throw a long left hook as he steps back, there is no way he can punch effectively moving or pulling straight back. When you see him step stright back, if he doesn't jab, throw your sweeping hook and nail him.

Learn to read his feints. Have your sparring partner feint and learn to read it. This will help take away some of his advantage. Always watch his chest and see everything.

So what are you trying to say...that Im slow :P

Thanks alot Buddie your threads are extremely appreciated.

You seriously should put a book out.

Thanks a tonne

Kym