Victor Alameida, host of The Unlimited You podcast, dives deep into the kingdom of speed - exploring techniques to increase your striking and movement speed in martial arts. He shares insights on developing disciplined speed through resistance training, relaxation, and repetition. Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or a beginner, this episode offers valuable strategies to elevate your speed and overall performance.

And if you're fast. And someone throws a strike, everything slows down. The faster you are, the slower everything moves. Someone can throw a punch that before used to move like lightning, and I will now be able to see it if I'm at that level of speed. It's just how, I don't know why this is the case, but the faster you move, the faster things you're able to see.

You just get used to living at that fast pace. I can see something moving really fast out of the corner of my eye and I can react to it. I'll see a punch coming at me and sometimes it moves in slow motion and I can get out of the way. So increasing your speed can also increase your reaction time, can allow you to become calm in the moment, and combining these things together becomes the most dangerous.

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To send it out, maybe 90 percent of the way, and then the last little bit, you'll turn it out. If we're sending it from the hip, you'll send it straight up, upside down. The last second, you're going to do that twist and locking it out. And learning the technique first and then making it smooth. Once you can do it smooth without stopping there and then pushing it forward.

Keep it at that speed or maybe even dial it back down a little bit and make sure that you have good form because if you get sloppy as you get fast, it's kind of pointless. So you want to develop good, accurate, disciplined, technical speed, not just raw speed. there's people out there who have just the raw ability, who have developed speed in other disciplines that will be able to transition into, let's say a martial arts discipline and be fast right away, but they may not have that technique.

So it's important to develop the technique so you don't compromise yourself. Now, speed and strength, they relate very well together. You need to have muscle in order to move fast. You need to have strong muscle. If you look at the world's fastest sprinters, their legs are huge versus the people who run marathons.

You know, do a full pull up, you know, um, just as an example and in martial arts, we train calisthenics and what calisthenics does is allows you to use your body weight and control it while you're doing exercises. And this builds control, this builds speed and mobility. So in our speed, we are working on what's called fast twitch muscle fibers.

You need to push a hundred percent of your speed. And once you get there, your muscles are going to be like, Oh, he's trying to use this type of motion and exploding faster and faster. Over time, it takes time. You have to be patient with yourself over time. You'll start to feel yourself getting faster and faster.

You'll be able to put in less effort and hit that top speed that you used to be at. And you can be like, Oh, I still got way more speed left in me. And that takes a lot of time to train. Now, let's say you've built your technique, done it slow, gotten it smooth, and then you turn up the speed and you've gotten it fast.

Now I like to do my taekwondo punches in the pool, throwing maybe a hundred punches. Now I pull back as fast as I can and I send that punch out as fast as I can. And that resistance, that added resistance underwater is going to make it harder for you to throw that, punch. So then when you get out of the water, That resistance isn't going to be there, but your muscles are used to it.

They're used to firing against that heavier, you know, water all around you. So when you go to the air, it's going to be easier. You're going to be faster. Most likely, if you are watching this, you're a fan of, like, anime or just martial arts in general. Let's say you haven't seen Dragon Ball Z or even Naruto, they use weights in their training.

So when I punch, I usually, and when I train, I like to take my watch off or I like to have something on me. That's a very soft because it's going to move and it's going to hit you. And that's one of the hardships of using.

It's going to be on this one spot and you're going to be throwing that and moving it, and it's going to jam down into your foot or jam down into your hand. And that can be uncomfortable. It can be downright painful. You might get bruises. This is why I like going into the water. The water is just full on all around you.

You're going to feel just as tired as long as you're putting in that effort. Another way that you can build speed. Let's say that you're working on explosive motion, right? You're trying to become a faster sprinter. Maybe you're trying to work on bringing your knee up, resistance bands, going uphill.

Sprinting uphill is one of the most. beneficial ways to your sprinting speed because you have additional resistance in that hill and you're exploding the muscles trying to go up that hill so then when you go to flat ground, that resistance isn't there. You can go a lot faster. And these principles, we take them and apply them to our training.

And that's really important when you're training for speed is not to just stop when you feel like, Oh yeah, this is good is to keep going because that little extra bit of push is going to give you that much more. Okay. I guess return in your training. Like let's say you're training for strength. If you do five sets of six or three sets of six, four sets of six, five sets of six, and it's pretty light and you can go to a higher weight and you don't, you're not going to be getting the same benefit as if like, let's say you do.

That's when you need to take the extra step forward. To go even faster and you're going to know that you can do that and it's going to give you the confidence is going to reinforce the brain pattern saying, Hey, I remember this feeling. This sucks, but I'm okay. I'm alive. I can breathe. I can move and I can actually push even harder.

And it's going to give you the sense of calmness on the inside. That's like, Hey, I'm doing the good work. I'm seeing the results. And then it's really important, especially when you're building speed to do it correctly. And when you are pushing your limits of strength, of speed with good form, it can be safe when you don't start, when you don't build your muscles.

We don't want to have a strong quad than our hamstring. We want to have even both in the front and the back, just as your chest, as your lats in both the push and the pull, it's going to keep us healthier in a better form. So that way, when we do push, when we do exert ourselves, the muscles that we're using, when they get tired, you're not going to be relying on a secondary stabilization muscle.

To push you further because a lot of the time is when we're really pushing ourselves and you're not, you don't have good form or you push too far past your limit and you don't know where to stop. That's where injury comes in. So training speed, it can be dangerous. But under good supervision, it can be very safe and beneficial.

You are pushing your muscles to the limit. And you need to be able to recuperate just your immune system. It needs a little bit of time to recharge. I only train speed maximum two to three days a week. Ideally, I try to really keep it at a two day max. I'll go to the pool, I'll do my high knees, my butt kicks, my front kicks and my punches.

So this is going to build your cardiovascular system and optimize your body's ability to take in that oxygen from the air. Put it through your lungs, pass it through your heart and put it into your blood system. That's going to help you last longer. And that endurance is going to help you push harder during that time.

You want to give up during that time. You want to quit. You're going to have more energy. So high intensity interval trainings, things like squat, jump tucks. Spider burpees up downs are exceptional in developing the body's ability. We're like, when you jump up and you bring your knees, you tuck them in and you land in a squatted position.

Those fast twitch muscle fibers and getting you to really fire them really fast. And that is critical for developing speed. So, to kind of cover a little bit of what you need in order to develop speed, is first you need technique. You need to have technique as a foundation before you step into the world of speed.

Then adding resistance. Maybe you want to do squat, jump, tucks with some weights on your calves. Maybe you, have a weighted vest you want to put on that's going to weigh your body down and it's going to make you feel slower overall. Maybe not your limbs, but your general body. If you attach the weights to your, the end of your limbs, it's going to be harder to throw that punch.

It's going to be harder to throw that hook punch, to throw that front kick, attaching the weight to the end of the limb. Now, I personally don't like to do that one. There's a lot of trainers who do. you can also add resistance with bands and parachutes. That's also very popular. I really like the whole band idea, especially putting a band around your waist, tying it to something behind you and trying to sprint or trying to kick with that band attached.

You're exerting in immense amount of energy and you get tired really fast in the water if you're working on, HIIT style training and. I'm a big advocate for training in the water because it reduces the impact on your joints when I jump, when I strike, it has a lot less impact on my knees. I can train at a higher intensity without doing that potential damage to my body.

Now, I've seen the difference in not training underwater and training underwater. And every time I train in the water and I come back on land, everything feels effortless. it just comes out easier. I can strike things faster. It's not as taxing on my body. And that's because I've put myself through a higher intensity training with more resistance so that when I come into this normal world, I Everything's more relaxed. that's another big key of speed and being relaxed. If you're tense, if you're squeezing all of your muscles and you go to throw a punch, all of this is tight. I'm not going to be able to launch that punch out with my full force. I'm not even going to get my full power behind it. Because I can't send out the speed of my punch.

But we really have to focus on being relaxed. You cannot be fast if you're tight, if you're super tight. You have to be relaxed. And then the strike comes out of nowhere, and it's right back here. But you have to be relaxed. The more relaxed you are, the easier those muscle fibers will fire all the way straight and pull back and getting used to throwing that strike in a relaxed format and at the very last second, squeezing at the moment of impact and then pulling it back.

You also use less energy. So your endurance is going to increase. You'll be able to. Go faster, use less energy, last longer. And then the person you're sparring or whoever you're defending yourself against, they're going to be like, Oh, and in 30 seconds, they're going to be down on the ground. And you're going to be looking at them like, what's up?

So being relaxed allows you to last longer. It allows you to be faster, allows those muscles to. Fire off faster and being relaxed also reduces your chance of telegraphing. So sometimes when you punch, people will do a slight motion before that punch comes out, right? And you'll see it. It's like you telling me that you're going to punch me.

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And another part of speed that a lot of people, I guess they don't really train it.

Same with your speed. If you've trained that speed and you take a big long break, you're probably going to find you got a little bit slower. Now it's a lot easier once you've developed that speed to come back to developing that high, the fast twitch muscle fiber. But it takes time and it takes consistency.

Somebody who puts in a hundred percent effort and is consistent with their training is going to outpace the person who is naturally faster. Who's not putting in as much effort and who's not consistent with their training. I've seen some very gifted, talented martial artists at a young age who just kind of, they got too good too early.

Well, they were training. They kept up. they were consistent, plied themselves. They showed up and showing up for this type of training. And it is difficult, is extremely important. If you don't do it, you're not going to develop speed. If you stop doing it, you're going to get slower. If you keep doing it, you're consistently going to build speed.

And that's very critical.

And it comes back faster than I think. And training in your body to be in that moment and entering that flow state, right? And we just talked about this a few episodes ago, entering that flow state, developing the strength, developing the technique. It all comes together into this big ball we call speed.

You just get used to living at that fast pace. I can see something moving really fast out of the corner of my eye and I can react to it. I'll see a punch coming at me and sometimes it moves in slow motion and I can get out of the way. So increasing your speed can also increase your reaction time, can allow you to become calm in the moment, and combining these things together becomes the most dangerous.

If you're strong, if you're fast, and you can apply those in timing and striking at the right time, You're unstoppable. And now speed, the speed force, flash, Superman, all those people who are extremely fast, they had the benefit of being able to never be hit. They saw a strike coming. They were able to move out of the way.

So speed is dangerous at the sudden stopping point. When you hit something and it stops, that force goes through the object and the more mass you have behind the thing that's moving, the more force is going to go into. that target, the spot you're impacting. So this is where the people who are big and bulky or heavy, if they are fast, they are exceptionally dangerous because their strikes are going to just be devastating versus somebody who's small.

Or you go up against somebody who's huge and they're also fast. That's scary. So in our training, we're building muscle. We're putting on a little bit of mass, lean muscle mass, not chubby fat so that we can be able to move well, that muscle is going to allow us to move faster. And if we have weight, that's.

So you also have to reinforce your limbs. You have to get used to punching at that speed. Used to hitting something without the knuckles. Without the wrist buckling. Without your shin buckling. So as you develop speed, you have to develop the endurance of the body. In striking hard things. So we strike wood.

through each technique that you do. So when you're developing speed, don't forget to also develop your body because you, when you throw that fast track, you're going to be delivering more power. Even if you didn't get stronger, that speed increases the amount of force being delivered through your target.

So it becomes critical to develop your limbs. The strength in each joint to withstand that impact. And when you're learning speed, give, be patient with yourself. It takes time. It's just like strength. It doesn't happen overnight. It takes a few months for you to develop the speed. And once you do, you're like, Oh, I'm fast now, but there's levels to this.

Right? So there's different places that you need to develop your speed. It's not just your punching, it's not just your kicking, but it's your footwork. Your footwork is so critical if you can get out and get back in before they can even see you. So footwork keeps you safe. That's one of the most important things in Taekwondo is how we move, stepping forward, stepping back, side shuffling, a stepping, lunging forward, all of these different moves keeps you safe.

And then you can use your strike, right? Maintaining distance with our speed. That's very critical. If you're small, You're going up against somebody's big, let them throw a strike, get out of the way, get in, throw one, two, three, and then get out so they can't grab you, so they can't pummel you down into the ground, right?

So you have to be very aware of your body. So train hard, push yourselves, but give yourself time to rest. That's really critical. your ligaments, your tendons are not going to heal as fast as your muscles. And when you're firing and delivering really heavy loads, you need a little bit more time to. to let it heal.

And this is where our training kind of hits different parts of your body at different times of the week. So that we do legs on one day and we let them rest for two days. We do arms the next day. We let those rest for two days. Then we do core and then we do a full body workout. That's so we can give each muscle group time to rest.