The Importance of Good Reflexes

When practising techniques through shadow fighting, heavy bag training, focus mitts or sparring, your guard must always be one of the main things you think about. Without a good guard, you leave yourself open to strikes when attacking. Plus, if your guard is held in the right place whilst you are attacking, it is easier for you to defend stop hits, counters and other defensive measures your opponent decides to use.

Because of the importance of a good guard and in order to be sufficient in defending attacks from your opponent through covering up, blocking etc, most martial artists spend much training time developing these skills. However, guarding properly and good defensive requirements are merely 50% of what is needed to not get hit.

This 50% is practised regularly and clearly understood from very early on by most martial artists. However, the other 50% requirement which many rarely practise is ones reflexes.

A reflex is defined as “an automatic response to a simple stimulus which does not require mental processing”.

So, you can be guarding yourself in the best possible way when attacking and can have the best defence in the world, but without good reflexes, you wont have time to stop yourself getting hit. Many martial artists develop there reflexes merely through sparring because this is the only time they have someone striking back at them.

Although this always helps, there are so many other ways to develop good reflexes. A speedbag and top and bottom bag are excellent training tools for this. Simply having a partner throw single strikes at you as you defend, getting faster over time, is also a good drill. One method which is very old school is to stand about half a meter away from a wall and in a continuous rhythm, throw a tennis ball against it, then catch it using only one hand. By constantly keeping your eyes on the ball and full concentration on catching it, you can develop very good reflexes with this drill.

After much time developing your reflexes you shall automatically respond much faster to attacks and counters from your opponent making yourself a much better fighter. Also by constantly successfully defending your opponents strikes, not allowing him to hit you, can frustrate your opponent and when he/she is frustrated it is very easy for them to become sloppy and careless maybe giving you an opportunity to dominate.

Marks

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Tags: reflexes, martial arts, strike, speedbag

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