Regardless of what kind of combat you’re in, you always have two jobs
Job 1 is easy. Wild swings can easily knock aside opponent’s attacks but they leave you poorly able to deliver a strike of your own (or defend yourself from your opponent’s second strike). That is, Job 2 may not be easily done.
A sometimes-heard phrase around the Academie is “doing things wrong will help you figure out when something’s right.” This is an often-understood but rarely appreciated concept.
Feeling in a bit of a slump in your sparring? Perhaps overwhelmed or under-challenged? Sparring games, where you create restrictions and alternate objectives, can be a great way to up the strategic challenge and interest, or allow you to focus on a smaller subset of skills.
The reality is that at full speed a reactive desperation to parry or an opportunistic desire to hit at all costs often create tunnel vision and lead to unwise actions, overextension, and exaggerated movement. These are all leading causes of losing bouts, not winning them.
Though I have said it is not your top speed that is important but rather how many speeds you have, being fast has its advantages. To cultivate speed in your martial art you need to consider several aspects of training.
When I set out to write this article I was reminded of this old Jim Carey sketch from In Living Color (be warned it involves some stab…
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