The Essence of Speed | Alteration Speed

In conclusion on the series of  The Essence of Speed we will look at Alteration Speed.

Alteration speed is the measurement of how fast you can change a motion after it has already been committed to.  For instance, your adversary leaves their head uncovered, so you throw a straight punch for the opening.  Just before landing, they step to the side to evade it.  Where alteration speed comes in is how quickly you can change your straight punch into a backfist to catch them as they move.

Alteration speed refers to any type of deviation from the initial motion.  It can be changing from one attack to another, stopping a motion mid-stream, or switching from an attack to a defensive maneuver.

To improve alteration speed, it is important to work on all four of the previous types of speed.  Obviously, without perceptual speed, the need for alteration may not even be recognized.  Without mental speed, you may not be able to process and send the information to your body to make the alteration.  Without the remaining types, you can see that it may be difficult to change your motion at all.

To work alteration speed by itself, a few drills will help.  Shadow boxing, again, is highly recommended.  As you shadow box, work on starting a motion, stop it part of the way through and change to another.  You should imagine situations that would necessitate an immediate change of tactics.
With a partner, a very useful drill is to have them throw focus mitts up for you to hit, as you attempt to strike them, they can pull the mitts away or change the angle for a different strike.  This will force you to alter your path.

Speed when broken down, is quite a bit more complicated than it may seem.  There are hundreds of variables and hundreds of ways to improve.  As with almost anything else, breaking it down and emphasizing the components separately will assist improvement and enable you to monitor progress more closely.  Improving speed as a whole, just the awareness of the different types helps tremendously.

To achieve that blinding speed that leaves others in awe, plan your workouts to focus on speed alone.  Create your own drills to improve your individual weaknesses.  Above all, never assume that you were not built for speed.  True speed is only relative to your state of mind.

Tagged as: Jeet Kune Do, Mike Gittleson