Faster

I have been doing TKD for a while now and am doing pretty good at it. but im not all that fast and i need to get quicker. the only problem is i dont know how! i dont know much about any excercizes that work speed. I know more about the strengthening excercises since they are easier to find. does anybody have any ideas? id appreciate any help you all can give me.

thanks in advance,
specter

Simple repetition with good form will help with your speed.

Get out there and spar, too!

Hey there,
I am not a kicker but I think what applies to punches applies to kicks( they are all muscles after all).
The way your punches become faster is this.
When you are throwing a punch you are using more than one muscle to throw that punch, what happens is that one muscle contracts while the other one relaxes. The more repitition, the easier it is for your muscle to know when to contract and when to relax. In the beginning though you have to do everything relaxed in order to feed your muscle memory.
So:
Lots of repititions,
Stay relaxed all through the movement.
Do not lock your joint/over extend because you will hurt your leg,
Do not put any power unless you are kicking something solid caue that will also hurt your leg..

Also I forgot to add...
The elastic tube/rope thingy that you use for resistance training is fantabulous for gaining speed and power.
Go to the strengthening forum and I m sure someone will be able to explain better how to use the tube thingy!

If we're talking kicks what helped my speed was the stationary bike with resistance built in or a regular bike for that matter since summer is here. For punches push-ups and bag work. As stated repetitions and form are important so there is no wasted motion and using the wrong muscles which will decrease speed, and of course flexibilty is also needed. These may or may not work for you. Since each person is an individual laboratory you will probably have to try some different things to see what helps YOU. But when you hit on the right formula you should see some kind of results within a reasonable time, say 6-12 weeks or sometimes sooner.

Hacky sack will help alot for speed, balance and accuracy.
The mechanics are different as you are trying to keep a ball/bag off the ground using only your feet.

Lots of activities will help martial artists,but the most effective is practice at what you are trying to get good at.Hacky sack will help you get good at hacky sack.

Go to your instructor and ask him/her how to improve your speed. If you hear generic answers like "just relax" or "don't tense up" without being shown how to do it most likely they don't know how. A good boxing coach should be able to increase you speed in a couple of weeks.

Kevin

The thing I realized about the the 'elastic tube/rope thingy' is the resistance is not even and consistant throughout the punch. with higher resistance being at the end of the punch. the place where you really want speed increase is at the beginning of the punch.

Low-weight reps is a good start. punching slow with uniform speed holding a 1.5 lb weight in each hand. Do that for 15 minutes and then stretch. another 15 min. and stretch. put the weights down and punch, now it feels faster, but most of that feeling is illusion...but some of it is not.

It's important that you don't punch full speed with weights...unless you want to learn what hyperextention feels like.

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The thing I realized about the the 'elastic tube/rope thingy' is the resistance is not even and consistant throughout the punch. with higher resistance being at the end of the punch. the place where you really want speed increase is at the beginning of the punch.

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You know power = mass*velocity, so you want the most speed at the point of impact for power, for just speed it's the average speed of the punch that counts I think, it's true that the acceleration will be mostly in the beginning of the punch, but the resistance will improve that too.

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punching slow with uniform speed holding a 1.5 lb weight in each hand. Do that for 15 minutes and then stretch. another 15 min. and stretch. put the weights down and punch, now it feels faster, but most of that feeling is illusion...but some of it is not.

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Is this so? I'd say you'd punch higher since the resistance is to the floor, which makes you adjust your punch upwards.
It's true that due to the law of slowness (sorry can't translate this better, but it's a law that states that any object wants to keep the speed and direction of movement it has, like pulling a tablecloth underneath plates, without the plates falling off the table), but that won't be that much, also it means you need more power to stop your punch, which may result in a slower/weaker punch anyway. Even at slow pace.

Maybe I'm just ignorant but at the moment I can't see any benefits to punching with weights (perhaps when you punch when you're on your back, punching upwards?)