White Man Fighting Tip 3

Password: "Nigger"

Speed will come. Your body does not differentiate between slow and fast repetitions as long as the body mechanics are correct.

Newcomers to any martial art tend to complete drills or practice repetitions very quickly. They want to replicate what it looks like at full speed and they assume they must practice a punch at full speed to be able to throw a punch at full speed. What ends up happening is they practice a sloppy punch with a lot of speed. This reinforces bad habits and creates a neural pathway for the technique that is incorrect, inefficient, and lacking in power. Adding in speed before proper form and technique also makes it very difficult to assess and critique what is actually going wrong with execution of the move.

SLOW DOWN. Your reps do not need to be full speed to help create a neural pathway. In fact, when you are new or warming up, you should absolutely do several reps in slow-motion, focusing on flawless body mechanics. Slow mo reps are the skeleton that provides proper structure for your skill and they are counted as a normal legitimate rep by your brain. It's the same for drawing a gun from a holster. You practice it slowly over and over, then try at speed. If the wheels came off then you reduce speed and try again before adding the speed back. When the situation is real, I promise your body will move incredibly quickly. If all of your repetitions were shit up until that point, you will perform poorly because your base structure was built like a mexican construction project. But if you did slow motion or even half-speed repetitions predominantly, your body will layer the speed on top of that easily and you will execute the technique very closely to how you trained it.