In this episode, we delve into the art of precision in martial arts. Discover how mastering accuracy can conserve energy, prevent counterattacks, and improve overall effectiveness. Learn techniques to enhance muscle memory, focus, and coordination for pinpoint strikes. Whether for self-defense or competitive edge, tune in to elevate your martial arts skills to new heights. Join us on The Unlimited You for a journey into precision.

If you have speed and you don't have accuracy, you might be super fast, but you're not going to hit your target. So you need to have speed and you have accuracy. And if you have both, you can hit your target before they see it coming. And then you can get out. And being able to strike with speed and accuracy at the right moment is called timing. And those are very important. I wouldn't say they're competing things, but they're important to train together. When you combine all these things, speed, accuracy, timing, strength. And if you have all of those, I think I talked about this before, you're pretty much unstoppable. So speed, accuracy, and timing are really important.

If I throw a punch and every single one of them hits the exact same spot and a more accurate. And it hits exactly where I want. I'm going to use less energy, right? So I become more effective at delivering my strikes. And that is, that's critical when you're saving energy, maybe you can last longer in a self defense situation, and that could end up saving your life.

Also, if you're accurate, you leave less chance for a counter strike. If I throw a punch and I hit you, there's less chance that you'll be able to strike me. Versus if I miss you can step to the side back or forward and then hit me back. So being accurate is very important. It's extremely important because if you don't have accuracy, maybe you hit somebody, you're going for like a body shot and you hit their elbow.

You know, from that practicing it to the point where you don't have to think about those movements, where it becomes muscle memory. So bringing a technique from understanding to muscle memory. After that, developing the accuracy is hitting different spots. So I do one low, I do one medium, I do one high and hitting those exact same spots every time and remembering that feeling, then you can move on to hitting that exact same spot multiple times.

So having something in front of you that you can look at. Is very critical. Now, it doesn't matter. Like, let's say you're sparring and you're going only for body shots. That's still a target, right? Or let's say you're going for head shots. That's still a target. So it could be a hand target. It could be a hand pad.

It could be a bag with dots on it or tape on it. It can be a sparring situation where you're trying to kick only the body. You're trying to kick only the head. Maybe you're only using your right foot. That's going to help develop your accuracy and having a target. And practicing hitting that target multiple times.

So then I can hit that spot without even looking at it. If you can do it with your eyes closed and hit the bottle off the top of a bag with your eyes closed, perfect. Body mechanics and alignment. So learning how the move starts. And what parts of your body need to move in order to get your limbs there, right?

And also what muscles to fire. Oftentimes we work on, let's say like a roundhouse kick and some people might move the front leg first. When I practice my roundhouse kick with my back leg, I will push off of my back, like, like I am sprinting. Like I am bringing my knee, trying to knee you in the chest. With as much speed as possible and that teaches my body, I need to push with my calf and bring my knee up with my quads and my hip flexor as fast as I can.

If my knee is pointed that way, my kicks going to go that way. But if it's pointed towards my target, it's going to hit that target. So learning what part of your body needs to do what in order to hit that target. And then practicing that over and over again. And this requires mental focus, right?

You cannot practice target. You can't build accuracy without having mental focus. So if I'm looking around all over the place, I'm thinking about what I'm going to have for dinner. I'm thinking about what happened today, or, you know, I want to go out with my friends tomorrow and I'm not here.

If I'm going to be striking this plant, I'm looking at the plant. I'm looking at the exact spot where I'm going to hit it. And my eyes are locked into that spot. I'm not going to look away. I'm not going to be looking over here, looking at that spot. So then I know that my strike boom is going to hit that exact same spot.

Good plan. Good plan. I'm not going to hit, but it takes that mental focus. Your eyes. direct your target. So if your eyes are moving around, wandering eyes all over the place, you're probably not going to build that accuracy. But if I focus, I keep my eyes on my target, I put my mind on, I need to bring my knee up, pivot and snap.

One thing I like to do is like we can throw a tennis ball. And then that tennis ball is coming at you. Can you punch it? That tennis ball is coming at you. Can you kick it right? And then doing different kicks. Can you do a roundhouse kick? Can you do a tornado kick? Can you do a back kick, a spinning hook kick to it?

Jump spinning hook kick to it. Can you jab the ball? Can you jab reverse two balls, right? So in actually bringing those two aspects together, the visualization, that mental and I focus and. are muscle memory and they come together to create hand eye coordination. And hand eye coordination is very important.

Now, the mechanics of it may be different. Maybe, you know, you're, you hold the bat differently than you hold a sword. Like you're not going to hold, you're not going to go up to bat baseball, holding the baseball bat, like a sword. You're going to be. You know, in a batter swing. So the mechanics of it may be different, but hand eye coordination or hand foot coordination is very transferable.

People who learn how to control their bodies, for example, in. dancing, ballet, gymnastics. They're usually pretty quick to pick up a lot of Taekwondo things because they have that coordination already. And you know, there's also dynamic and static balance. When we strike, especially with our feet, it requires balance.

If you don't have balance and you throw a kick, you're probably going to fall down. If you don't have balance and you throw a really powerful punch, what if they grab you and they pull you forward and you're not going to be stable on your feet. Or if you don't have balance, when you throw a punch, you might also fall down.

That becomes. Very essential to your self defense. Staying on your feet, not falling down, keeps you safe, lets you run out and get out of there after you strike. And that's very critical. The balance also allows your body the stability to hit the target. If I bring my knee up and I'm shaking all over the place, it's going to be a lot harder for me to bring my foot to that spot that I need to hit it at.

Practice hopping on one foot. Practice hopping, going down on roundhouse kick chamber on one foot. Hopping and kicking on roundhouse on one foot. These different exercises help balance. Maybe you can lean forward, lean back, sideways, bring the knee up, out, forward, extend the leg up and down while you're in.

If you have speed and you don't have accuracy, you might be super fast, but you're not going to hit your target. So you need to have speed and you have accuracy. And if you have both, you can hit your target before they see it coming. And then you can get out the only other thing that I guess you can throw in there, and we've talked about this in a previous episode is timing.

And being able to, maybe they bring down their hand in training. And as soon as they bring down the hand, you strike them right. And being able to strike with speed and accuracy at the right moment is called timing. And those are very important. I wouldn't say they're competing things, but they're important to train together.

And then you can have like a big Hokey bulk person who's slow. And if you've got speed, they won't be able to touch you. It's dangerous when you combine all these things, speed, accuracy, timing, strength. And if you have all of those, I think I talked about this before, you're pretty much unstoppable. So speed, accuracy, and timing are really important.

And through doing these drills, through doing the calisthenics, you're gonna build strength. You're gonna build strength. And when you work on accuracy, I guess, back to speed. When you work on speed, you're working on fast twitch muscles, making your muscles fire faster, and the more you do it, the faster you get.

You can't really do those kicks slow. So then you go back to a roundhouse kick and you work on your roundhouse kick accuracy and you practice doing it slow. You do it slow. You do it smooth. Once it's smooth, you can become fast and fast is good. And this is a saying that's said across a lot of different disciplines.

Keep cranking the speed. The more you get it right. And then let's say you miss. Crank the speed back just a little bit and get that lower speed to hit that exact same spot over and over again, and then crank it back up. Be patient with yourself. When you're developing accuracy, you're going to suck at first.

That's just how it is because you're developing hand eye coordination. You're developing muscle memory. You're developing body and mental focus, and it doesn't happen overnight. You're not going to become Superman or super woman or super person overnight. You're going to become that human slowly over time through intense very intense and like intentional training.

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And when we're our footwork in the position that everything starts in is critical. If you are training a good fighting stance from the get go. And your foot is in the right position. Your body will remember exactly where it needs to go. And then when it comes time to actually deliver it, you don't have to think about it.

If your feet are in the wrong position, let's say I have my back foot. It's a little bit further back and I go to bring it around on a roundhouse kick. It's going to change the position of my hips, of my shoulders, and that's going to compromise the technique, right? So the foundation becomes your stance and your footwork and your movement.

Are you moving and staying in that foundational stance? That is very critical in developing your accuracy. What I see, and this is a big hurdle for everybody, I haven't seen a single person not do this. I've used to do this. I don't do it now because I practiced it enough, but after you kick, or after you punch, or throw a strike, Your fighting stance changes.

You either kick, let's say you're starting here, you kick and you might land super long or you kick and you might land super short and then your feet are together. Well, if your feet are together, you're standing, you're going to fall a lot easier. If you kick and you land super wide, your legs are going to be more extended.

That means turning and then sending your kick out the back. If your foot's a little bit forward and you turn, you're going to be off balance. You might sprain your knee a little bit. So the position that your body's in is very critical. And then hand, eye, foot coordination. I guess we already talked a little bit about this, but that becomes some of the most important things to develop in your accuracy.

So you're developing your ability to punch and kick one spot over and over again. Now when we train Taekwondo, we train punching right here at the sternum and you can feel the spot in your chest. There's no muscle there. It is. It's just cartilage. It's very dangerous to be stricken here. And that is where we practice our punch.

And it's just, it's not safe. I don't punch anybody there in a sparring session. Usually we have a lot of gear to protect ourselves from these specific spots in our body. So developing that coordination is critical. I do another drill where you might be on your knees and you're punching the ground in front of you and hitting the ground.

And you can't just do it for one technique. So if I want to become accurate, I want to practice the accuracy of every single kick I do, of every single punch I do. My roundhouse kick, my back kick, my side kick. I could list all the different kicks. I want to work on every single one of those. The kick I don't practice my accuracy in, I'm not going to be as good as utilizing and performing that under a stressful situation.

So again, remember what you practice is what you do. Practice doesn't make perfect. It doesn't practice makes permanent. What I practice is what I do. So how I am in practice, if I'm like half assing, if I'm like given 50 percent and I go to defend myself, guess what? I'm only going to be used to giving 50%.

I'm not going to be as stressed out. My muscles aren't going to be clenching and I'll be able to hit that target. So practicing and making that muscle memory and staying calm. It, and I know sometimes it can sound like I'm a broken record because I'm always talking about these things and how they all correlate with each other.

But it's, the truth. Like they all help each other.

So if I practice at a hundred percent in practice with my mind, with my body, I give my, you know, when we're at practicing speed, I give it a hundred percent when I'm practicing accuracy, my mind is fully there and you know, I'm not looking around. I'm not slacking off. I'm going to build that habit. In being able to perform that way when I actually need it to happen.

You have to push yourself a hundred percent. Like you're going to only get faster by going as fast as you can. You're only going to improve your focus by focusing, which is, it's like, it sounds weird, but it's true. Like you have to focus to become better at focusing. You're only going to improve your accuracy by focusing your eyes and developing your hand and foot eye coordination, right?

in trying it over and over again and improving your technique and being in increasing your awareness of your body. And through the progression you become better. Now you have to accept that at first you're gonna suck. Like I used to suck. Like everybody when they started sucked. Like everybody started at ground zero.

And then the other people who weren't as good surpassed them because of their willpower. It's like all of these things come into play. You know, can you push yourself through your speed? Can you focus your mind? Can you be calm? Can you persevere through the hardship? Cause training is very hard on the body.

Your body gets pushed to the limits of strength of physical exertion. You might get lightheaded. You might get dizzy. These are normal things that we need to experience to learn what our limits are. If you never push the limits of your speed, how do you expect to get faster? If you don't push your physical exertion until you almost get to the point where you collapse, how do you know where the line of, I can't push it anymore is going to be.

So this is where having a coach going to a school and learning how to do this from somebody who has done it and put themselves through it. Through the tests of their own selves is going to, it's going to help you. And that's what this is all about. We have practiced, we have trained ourselves, the martial arts masters of the world have gone through the ringer and they have attained a certain level of technique and ability that is not attainable by the normal person because of what they've gone through.

It is not like. It's not an opinion, this is a fact. If you train this way, you will get here. If you give up, you'll only get there. If you keep going, I don't care how hard, how long it takes, you're gonna get there. Now, some restrictions may be like, some, everybody's body's different. You may have some like, Hip immobilities that you need to work on.

And over time, through, you know, being able to calm themselves. To being aware of what's happening. They were able to get to the splits. They were able to do that roundhouse kick without compromising their body position. They were able to learn the steps. They got their black belt and it takes time. We have to be patient with ourselves.

You don't want to be hard on yourself. Now there's a difference between drive to want to succeed and being hard on yourself. If I fail, I'm going to say great. I know I failed. I know how to not do it. I know where either my limit is. And I'm going to learn from that. And that's the attitude it takes to get to go forward and almost anything.

But if you're sitting there and you fail and you're like, I suck, I'm never doing this again. Well, you probably suck. And you're never doing it again. Cause you just told yourself that, I think I said this earlier. So be kind to yourself in your training, how you are with yourself dictates how you are with everybody else.

And if you don't, I'm gonna push you. Or your teacher's gonna push you. I guarantee you, if you're at a good school, and you can do like five push ups. You give it a few months and if you're being pushed enough and if you are willing to give it your all you will progress. I've had a kid who can only do like five push ups.

A year later he's up to like 50 push ups in a year. That is incredible. So, don't limit yourself by your thoughts. Detach from it and know and tell yourself, I can do it if I put my mind to it. And you can achieve anything. You can unlock yourself. You can remove that wall. You can unlimit yourself. Because we are unlimited if we allow ourselves to be.