Last night when we were doing the two minute return a jab with a jab and then finish your opponent off, but doing it SLOWLY. For some reason I was having a hard time with the keeping it slow part. Even though I know I have very good control in my attacks when it comes to preventing hurting my partner when we are doing drills I still feel the need to move at a pace that I am always comfortable at. Is it something that is just ingrained? I was told to slow it down and yet I did but then I got confused on what technique or combo I should use and I know we were just practicing creating new combos I felt I was pulling off good combos when I wasn’t thinking about it. Though I was going at a pace I was comfortable with, yet the sifus’ were not. I intend no disrespect to the sifus’. I guess it is just the fact that I pretend I am out in the street somewhere and I use stuff that just comes to me although it’s not with the same aggression I would use outside the dojo it’s still at a pace that wasn’t slow. You kinda know what I am getting at. I guess what I am rambling on about is I feel these natural techniques coming to me and I don’t think about, but when I slow down and think about it I lose it. I feel like I am imaginative enough that I bring some serious combos to the table but it’s only when I am not thinking about it. I felt like I understood the drill that we were performing but I couldn’t follow it like it was meant. I mean the obvious solution is to just slow it down, yet it feels more than that I need to do.
It just takes practice. The exercise seems easy, but very difficult to go slow. Everyone see’s an opening and BAM! wants to get there yesterday. Remember this is just a learning tool.
LD, yeah, like today’s last drill. That was cool, thinking about where to strike next, even though I wasn’t as good as I wish I was! And I got to hit Ricky.
Yeah, well at least with that training drill to, it shows how everyone is different in their attacks, and it shows what comes natural to you. Which is pretty cool cause you never really see what you do to a person when you are actually fighting because everything goes so fast and the stress factor shuts your mind down and you just react. So the slow-mo definitely helps improve on those attacks while at the same time creating new attacks which need to be ingrained in a person.
Another thing it allows you to do is get the strike down correctly. If you enter with a jab and want to throw a left hook after it, practicing fast wil probably result in a sloppy hook. Practicing slow allows you to practice throwing the hook under ideal situations. The goal being that as you speed up you keep your technique.
Don’t know if I am allowed to butt in on Jeff and Dan’s corner- But my input is that control of speed tends to be a thing that develops somewhere around blue belt in most Kenpo students. It seems like a really common thing, there are a lot of comments made on this topic both when it applies to techniques, sparring and also here as mentioned during drills.
Speaking on hooks, I do need to get my technique down with that because when I throw a straight punch even a uppercut my fists always contact with my first two knuckles but I am always noticing when I hit the bag….and I have always done this but I always hit with my whole fist when I come in on a hook , it’s like when I rotate my fist as well as my elbow instead of just my whole elbow and I always end up hurting my wrist, especially when I hit the bag. And I am always hitting things so fast that the instructors could never tell if I was doing a sloppy hook or not. But I always felt it inh my fist and wrist.
SHADOW SINCE YOUR LAST POST HERE, YOUR SPARRING HAS IMPROVED. REMEMBER IT’S A SLOW PROCESS, STICK WITH IT. KEEP SIGHT OF YOUR OPPONENT WITH YOUR GOOD EYE.
