Fists Like Lightning

5 Ways to Boost the
Speed of Your Punches

by Rob LaPointe

If you want to develop goal-oriented discipline, heightened concentration and superlative awareness, you don’t do it by thinking deep thoughts. You do it by attempting something physical.

The martial arts exemplify this when they lead students through a program of progressive goal setting and self-improvement. Whatever aspect of the arts you’re pursuing—be it forms, sparring or self-defense—you can expect to strengthen, improve and expand your mind and your body.

By emphasizing physical performance, the martial arts require you to develop your intellect and mental stamina. The reason is simple: Athleticism disciplines the mind. Along the way, the body changes for the better.

Even within the practice of the martial arts, however, it’s easy to become satisfied with your current level of performance and lapse into maintenance mode. You do your regular workout but stop short of pushing yourself. You practice your forms just to keep from forgetting them. You do pull-ups so you don’t get weak, you spar so you don’t lose your timing or forget your favorite combinations, and you run so you don’t pack on the pounds.

Maintenance mode isn’t about making progress; it’s about treading water. It’s entirely possible to regularly and faithfully go through your routine but never get better at any of it.

Sometimes that’s OK, though. After all, most likely there’s a lot going on in your life, and sometimes you have to focus your energy on higher-priority items. But if you’re like most martial artists, you’ll be chomping at the bit to switch back into improvement mode so your skills can climb even higher.

You can break out of maintenance mode fairly easily by adopting a workout that focuses on increasing your hand speed. The following are some simple drills you can use to improve your skills. They’re guaranteed to leave you faster and smoother after each workout, and in no time that will place you head and shoulders above the competition no matter which art you practice.

As you learn the associated principles and perform the drills, remember that speed is not the same as being in a hurry. In the Wind Book, the final part of Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings, the medieval Japanese swordsman cautions: "Really skillful people never get out of time, are always deliberate and never appear busy. From this example, the principle can be seen."

First the science. At one time or another, you’ve probably had someone explain the physics of hitting hard. In short, increasing your speed is more important than increasing the mass of your fist. Technically, it’s stated by a simple equation:

ke=1/2mv²

In English, kinetic energy equals one half mass times velocity squared. In simpler terms, the energy of your moving fist and arm increases if the weight of your fist increases, but it jumps even more if your fist moves more quickly.

Therefore, if you increase the mass of your hand by 10 percent, you get a straight 10-percent increase in kinetic energy. However, if you increase your hand speed by the same amount, you get a 21-percent increase in kinetic energy. Obviously, hitting with greater speed pays off with slightly more than twice the kinetic energy.

Listed below are five drills that will help you boost your speed and thereby bump up your striking power.

Every martial artist knows how to do a heavy-bag workout. To most efficiently transform your routine into a speed-hitting session, consciously follow these principles:

• Relax. Don’t tense up when you punch. Don’t strain. As boxers say, "Don’t flex, punch." Just relax and let your fists fly.

"Speed is a relaxed muscle contracting very quickly," says Black Belt Hall of Fame member Bill Wallace. "The problem is that most people anticipate the action they’re about to perform and tense the muscles they’re going to use. What happens then is they’re trying to move an already contracted muscle. They now have the antagonistic and agonistic muscles working against each other, and this hurts their speed." You can avoid that by staying relaxed.

• Use push/pull. Again, remember what boxers tell us: "Don’t hit with your arm; hit with your body." When you throw a punch, use you entire upper body by consciously drawing back the shoulder of your non-hitting arm.

• Don’t give away your speed advantage by telegraphing. One of the easiest ways to teach yourself not to telegraph is to be sure you’re moving your striking body part before you move anything else. If you want to throw a punch, your hand must move first. (Note that doing this will also force you to relax.)

• Bring it back fast. Don’t just speed up your outbound movement; accelerate the retrieval as well.

If you train according to the aforementioned four principles, you’ll transform your slugging-it-out heavy-bag workout into a speed-hitting workout that trains your body to execute faster and harder strikes.

A great way to accelerate your punches involves overlapping the movements of a combination you happen to favor. If you’re familiar with the computer concept of "pipelining," you know that overlapping can speed up a set of actions that are supposed to be executed sequentially.

To illustrate, consider the left-jab-right-uppercut combination. Begin with both hands up in a traditional boxer’s stance. You have an easy jab from this position, but it’s difficult to throw the uppercut without cocking your right hand low before it comes up. Cocking the hand violates the principle of "point of origin"—or firing from where you are, rather than chambering your weapon—so you don’t want to do that.

A viable solution—one that increases speed, improves your defense and adds power to the first technique—is as follows: When you execute the left jab, rotate your body slightly to the right while bending your right leg, dropping your right shoulder (but not your hand, which will drop by virtue of the shoulder being lowered) and moving your head to the right. Without telegraphing anything, you’ve cocked your right hand and sped up the combination.

Whatever combination you opt to use, remember not to rush. When you hurry, you not only tense your muscles but also make mistakes. The result is often that you perform the move at less-than-maximum speed and with less-than-optimal form.

Brazilian jujutsu master Rorion Gracie agrees: "More important than doing the move fast is to focus on doing the move right at slow speed many times. Speed is a result of practice."

If you fire your punch from an obscured position, you’ve increased the "perceived" speed of your technique.

A supporting concept comes from Bruce Lee’s Fighting Method: Advanced Techniques: "The following aspects are needed to attain greater speed: warming-up exercises to reduce viscosity and increase your flexibility; suitable stance; visual and audio awareness, and quick-reacting habitual patterns."

With that in mind, remember that in sparring, everything is variable. The side of your body you place forward, how deep you make your stance, whether you hold your hands up or down, how close you stand to your opponent—nothing stays the same. Therefore, you should willfully change those variables when you practice fighting. It will force you and your partner to adapt, and it will create opportunities that demand to be exploited.

One proven method involves edging toward your opponent, then leaning back slightly so you’re actually closer than you appear before you drop your lead hand. From that position, you can execute a straight lead-arm strike to the jaw as you lean forward. The combination of suddenly leaning forward—and in so doing, showing your opponent how close you actually are since the placement of your feet means most of the gap has been closed in advance—while delivering a strike that comes from below his field of vision and most likely from a position that’s at least partially hidden by his guard will enable you to hit him before he knows what’s happening.

Blitzing while you jog is a great way to increase your speed. When you’re out for your morning run, break your gait by suddenly performing blitzing footwork—in other words, shooting your lead foot back as you cross-step with your rear foot and "fall" forward.

Doing that while you run helps you develop your speed, makes your road work more interesting and teaches you not to advertise your set point with flashing neon lights. Most people who develop good blitzing footwork do so only from a stationary position. If you learn how to do it while moving, your hand techniques will be perceived as being even faster.

Another drill for speed hitting is the partner coin drop. Have a classmate release a coin while you try to catch it in midair, put it on his open palm and quickly snatch it away. It works because it develops your hand speed while forcing you to react as soon as your partner acts.

A quick way to increase your explosiveness, which is a very practical form of speed for martial artists, is to do push-ups starting from the down position. Thrust your arms out as quickly as you can. Aim to propel your body so high that your hands leave the floor. Fringe benefit: You’ll add strength to your arm muscles, too.

Those are but a few of the drills that can be used for speed hitting. No matter which ones you select, you’ll find that greater results come when you don’t simply go through the motions but concentrate on what you’re doing instead. That’ll transform the exercises into speed drills as well as mind/body drills, and that’s really what the martial arts are all about.