Speed and quickness

[Skyling35]

Seems like there are several people on here now that have been involved in some sort of a combat sport at some point. So figured this was a good place to pose the question

I'm taking a good amount of time to work specifically on aspects of mma which I need to improve. I have the knowledge in alot of areas but this one.
How exactly would I go about increasing speed? Hand speed is a big one I'd like to work on. General explosiveness, quickness, speed.

I can say I did seem to see some carryover between the Olympic/power lifting type work I did. Which seems to probably cover the explosive aspect of speed and quickness

What other techniques am I missing for this? There's gotta be something sport specific that boxers or mma guys do for this type of thing.

My coach was from the school of thought that you either have speed or you don't and I just didn't agree with that.

[Skyling35]

Or.....

Hot, nasty, badass, speed. As Ricky bobby would say lol

[Vicious 13]

I believe some people just have speed others won't ever have my coaches have always told me I have extra gears others just don't have whether it be running or hitting a speed bag

[SisterSteel]

You wanna get more explosive.... you need to properly learn the Oly lifts (power clean and power snatch). I'd suggest you find an Oly lifting facility around you and have one of the coaches over there teach you the lifts. Also, you can take any slow lift and may it fast (dynamic) by adding chains and/or bands.

This is what I have done and at Masters Worlds I had a BB come up to me and say they have never seen a heavyweight move as fast as a lightweight.

Those are the 2 things I would advise you to do for explosive strength. Now for speed you need to do some agility work; ladder drills, stadiums, box jumps, plyo's.

Nowadays you need to cross train if you want to be really good at a sport.

[kazman68]

I used the speed bag when boxing, in the summer I would let flies in on purpose and practice snatching them out of the air, sounds silly but good for speed,timing and hand eye coordination, and as Sister said building explosive power,speed when training.

[Fredrik]

GSP is the best

[DelphaMorrison]

Speed is the first and basic thing in these activities like boxing, martial arts etc.. so you should grab the basic first.

[Colstreamer]

I know this is an old post but the subject is one I'm very familiar with, being a kickboxers and being known to be particularly explosive.

There are two basic ways to improve speed; first, simply try to move faster eg try throwing more punches per minute against a bag (speed bag or heavy bag) second, try moving fast against resistance eg using a moderate to heavy weight push (or pull) as fast and explosively as you can from the start position.
I'll expand on that with a couple of examples.
Time yourself on the heavy bag and try throwing as many punches as you can in 1 minute, each time you do this workout attempt to beat your previous score. Try not to use less range of motion or crappy technique, you'll only be robbing yourself of any benefit if you do that. You won't look like a badass doing this as your technique WILL suffer, no matter how hard you try to maintain it nor will you be hitting as hard as you can, but you will become faster.

Choose an exercise which closely mimics the movement you're trying to improve eg for punches the bench press is good. Choose a moderately heavy weight ie lighter than what you'd use for strength training but still heavy. Lower the bar normally until it touches your chest, pause, then push it up as fast as you possibly can. It won't move fast as it's a heavy weight! However, because you're TRYING to go fast you're telling the muscles they need to go fast so they'll develope to be faster. Remember; just because you're pushing the weight fast on the concentric phase don't start letting it drop down on the eccentric phase. Doing that will increase the likelihood of tearing a muscle or worse.