Improving your reflex is the best way to observe the opponent and make a counter at the right time. Many professional fighters take the idea of learning to have reflex very seriously.
While other factors improve your overall martial art techniques, having a great reflex will save you from getting hit anywhere in the body.
Martial arts is more about the fight than putting up the only offense. A great defense always helps the fighter to learn all the moves and makes perfect coordination for the attack.
A slower reflex can determine the results of the fight. As they will fail to speculate the next move of the opponent, and eventually the match will result in defeat.
In a fighting arena, a split-second will make or break a fight for any fighter. While having a good fence will help you take most of the attacks head-on, but that will take a crazy amount of toll out of your cardio and stamina. Which you don’t have to spare in the middle of the fight when you have to throw another jab or a straight to win some score count.
Having reflex will help you save fuel in your tank so you can spend it later on offense rather than taking damage to your body. Most of the time avoiding the damage is the best way to win a fight with less trouble. There are a number of approaches that you can take to improve your reflex for a fight. They will help you observe every single movement of your opponent, so you will have the ability to predict the moves that your opponent will make in a fight.
The Importance of Reflexes in Martial arts
Combat sports like MMA are picking up a lot of steam in the world today. Plenty of fighters are stepping into the ring to prove to the world that they have the blood of a fighter.
It is more than a fighting tournament for people. It is an achievement that people like to have in their life, they would go to extreme lengths to make the dream possible. While some people get into the martial art ring, some prefer to wear the good old gloves for boxing matches. Either area requires the fighter to have the high mental physical strength to continue in the right without giving up.
The important of Coordination on Reflex
Coordinating every aspect of the body to control the stamina, fatigue to win the match is how fighters stay alive in the ring for a longer time. It is not about strength, it is about handling yourself perfectly without losing the mind. Every jab, swing, strike, your opponent will have an answer to each one of the moves.
Here reflex is the best friend you need to have in your corner. When your opponent throws back, you need to have the perfect reflex to counter or dodge the attack. This will save you plenty of transforming iron taking the damaged head onto your body or your arms.
Effective Dodging for improve reflex in martial arts
A good way to tire out the opponent is dodging the attacks and hitting back after it. Many of the professional fighters have dodging moves that they use to avoid fatal blows.
In a fast-paced action, every move becomes unpredictable with slower reflexes.
Reflex requires the fighter to have a high concentration on nothing but only the fight. While some might have a belief that reflex can only be better by only fighting, other techniques will help the fighter to have higher reflexes and better concentration on the fight. Terms such as perry, counter-attack, dodging, avoiding damage all come from having a good reflex.
While much of the reflex will get used to making you better at gaining strength and reserving stamina for the rounds.
But much of the benefit of having good reflex will help you earn a higher concentration in the battle.
The connection between your brain and your mind is vital for the body to react in a perfect manner, having reflexes will help you do that. As you will have a higher concentration in the field and will know what steps to take to avoid damage or to counterattack at the right time.
Related : Way of winning in martial arts
Effects of Reflex Training
There are a lot of techniques and skills that go on to learn about reflex training. Reflex comes from a fighter’s instinct on the moves of the opponent. When you get to a certain level, you don’t have to speculate on the movies, your body will automatically react to the actions.
And will know which step or move to make to avoid the damage by 100% in a second. To get to the stage requires a lot of experience and training. Which you will know all about in the sections below.
While the reflex training is effective, there are steps that you need to take to make the training extract more results on a fight.
Step 1 -Don’t rely everything on the mind
While thinking about the moves is a great way to speculate the moves of the opponent, most of the time when a fighter relies too much on the moves of the opponent that will get in your way of a perfect counter or dodge. You don’t have to think of everything in the ring, the best way to have perfect reflex is to make your mind clear of everything that is considered distracting.
Step 2- Overthinking
Overthinking is a grave mistake a fighter can make in the ring, this will certainly throw people out of deceptive mode, as they will spend time analyzing everything rather than focusing on the important bits.
When your brain goes into overthinking mode, you will go to panic mode after a couple of minutes into the match. You will feel nervous about making a move that might end up getting countered. Most of the fighters take overthinking into the early fishers instead of making the wind clear.
Step- 3 A clear mind
The best thing that reflex training will give you is a clear mind. This is highly essential, the mental pressure will be a lot for the newcomers and for the veterans in the game too. Having a clear mind will help you make better judgments of your actions.
The basic part of reflex training is to make the fighter develop an instinct about the actions that they will do in the ring. Strengthening the mental capacity is how you will beagle to make your reflex perform better. After a while, everything will be natural and you will have a calmer mind ready to handle anything.
The best reflex training to improve your martial arts
For me the best Reflex trainings that will help you achieve a clear mind and better judgment on your actions are :
- Reaction combination training
- Slow sparring
Reaction Combination Training For Improving Reflex
If you want to take a step towards improving your reflex, then you need to add Reaction Combination Training to your list. This will help you speed up your reflexes and will help you to react properly at the right time. Reaction training will bring your A-game, as you will know what moves to strike the opponent instead of thinking too much.
Since we all know overthinking will ruin any activity, the same is true in reflex training. The act of performing the right action at the right time without making a mistake will come from reaction combination training.
The Right reaction is the key to success on the battlefield, which is something that you want to know before stepping into the ring. Professionals here improve their skills with pad or mitt training. While people use pads and mitts to train their body and mind. But in Reaction training, you will be using these tools to their full potential.
What is Reaction Combination Training on martial arts?
Here the main focus is to create the fighting environment, have your coach or training partner strike you with all kinds of attacks that you would expect from your opponent to throw in the ring. Now the game is all about analyzing the moves, the sequence of the attacks.
Then you will soon understand the familiar pattern, it is this pattern that will teach you everything you need to know about the fighting area. Just like in the real ring, the opponent will throw a barrage of attacks, one after another without any pause.
But there is always a pattern in the attacks, which demands a strong reading and observation. When you go through a reaction combination training, you will have to put on your best defense, then look for the window of opportunity for the counterattack to land.
While it is recommended to let your coach go easy at first with slower movements, after a while it will be better to amp it up. After you can dodge the slow attacks, and learn the pattern behind them, then you can take the training to the next level. You can do that by making the coach throw strikes faster.
How Reacting combination training will affect your submission skill?
Various grappling techniques also can be tackled as well. If you are in a sport that requires you to be the best grappler or wrestler, here you will need to fend off the submission first without burning the fuel in the body.
Most Of the time people who enter a submission will burn all their energy to get out of submission. Reaction combination training will help you have better instincts in the ring. The simulated attacks and tackling will help you prepare for what is about to come.
This will take out the surprise element in your fight, no need to worry about the moves of wrestling your opponent might have at their disposal. As long as you pull off a proper reaction to the scene, then you will easily counter the attacks.
Slow sparring Technique for improve reflex on martial arts
One of the ways you can get good reflex in the area is by knowing the moves of the opponent. Different techniques require a diverse range of skills for proper defense and offense skills.
Slow sparring will help you know about the attacks, and where they are coming from without getting hit. Slow sparring is a training phase that lets the fighter be aware of their surroundings.
The effectiveness of the Slow sparring Technique on martial arts
Here all the techniques that would be part of a normal fight get used in the slow sparring session. If you ever see a slow sparring session, then everything might look a bit weird, but there is a reason for it.
This is where you will know the location of the strikes and the follow-ups. Learning about this will help you put up a great defense. No matter what is the follow-up to a random attack, you will know what steps to take to avoid them or possibly set up a counter-attack.
Just like the real match, all techniques are part of a slow sparring session. So you would get a real fight experience just in slow motion. When you make things faster, it will rather get difficult for anyone to understand or analyze the techniques of the opponent, slow sparring sessions will help you speculate about the attack pattern.
So, instead of fast, you will take things much slower. Every attack will have its direction and pressure. Avoiding them at the right time without taking a blow to your body is the best-case scenario that you should hope for in this session.
How will it help you with your concentration?
Studying the movement of enemies while perfecting the defense is the best key to success in the area, here with these sparring techniques you will learn about the movements of your opponent’s mind and get comfortable sharing the ring. Slow sparring will also open up to a new way of entering the battle.
Every attack pattern has its own move set, learning about them will help you a lot in counter any move that gets thrown at you in the real ring. Slow-motion moments might not sound much, but it is effective, your brain will slowly register every move and the way to miss every one of them. After a few sessions, your body will react on its own, and the muscle memory will help you get better at having perfect reflexes for actions.
Get a Reaction ball If You Want Improve Reflex
If you spend much time in the workout session, then consider giving the reaction ball a shot. It is one of the most valuable tools that you can have in your workout area, it will come out handy in your reflex training session. One Of the major things that these balls focus on is hand-eye coordination and agility.
This is the reaction ball that i use for improve my reflex :
Why get a reaction ball to your workout schedule?
So why do so many fighters add reaction balls into their workout schedule, the answer is unpredictableness. A ball can move in any direction, just like the actions in the fight arena. It is difficult to speculate when or what the next move will be in the ring.
But practicing with a ball helps you determine all these aspects that you won’t get to see. Reaction balls are made of rubber balls, they will help you a lot in developing a great reaction time.
One of the simplest approaches to this training is just to drop the ball from your waist and catch it. To take it a bit further you need to hit the ball on the wall, and then try to catch it. This will enhance your stamina and will help your sense and mind to work better when faced with unpredictableness. The ball will help you remove any element of surprise that you feel in the ring. When you have no fear of anything, then you will be able to give your 100% in the ring without slowing down.
This technique also helps you rely on your defense and the mindset behind it. So you will have a cleaner mind predicting the moves of your opponent without making any mistake on the way. When it comes to adding tools to improve your reflex and defense, adding a reaction ball might not be the craziest idea at all.
Shadow Boxing For Improving Reflex
While Shadowbox is not seen as reflex training, if you jump into shadow bling your reflex capabilities will definitely see an improvement. You want to read the opponent’s attack pattern movements in real-time, then shadowboxing is the fighting style that you need to pay attention to.
Advantage on doing Shadowboxing for reflex
Shadowboxing includes recreating every bit of the fight without the physical content. This is a great way to evaluate your workout process and fighting tactic that you choose before the fight.
If you have any concern over the fighting style of your opponent, then you need to learn the shadowboxing that will help you see the gap in the attacks, so you will be able to land your move in there.
People used to do these types of boxing in front of the mirror, while it does have its advantages, but it will do nothing to help you reflex, as you will not see any tactics improve your fighting tactic that fits well with the opponent’s offense. These things will only happen if you are facing a training partner, so they will go over all the movies, and do all of them in the ring. No physical content will help you react better to the move sets
Get a double end bag for improving reflex on Boxing/ MMA
Another addition to your training session that you might think about adding is the double end bag. As they have responsive elastic cords and can be attached to the ceiling or to the floor.
You Can achieve coordination, reflexes, and timing with the double end bag easily without any error. A double end bag differs a lot from a heavy bag, the best thing about the double end bags is the movement, this is something that you will not get to see in the heavier bags. The cords on the bag will do a great job in creating the faster movements that you expect from an opponent in the real world.
This is the reason why so many fighters have double end bags in their training room.it eliminates all the limitations of the heavy bag, so you will hone your other skills without missing a beat. The quick movements of the bag will put a great challenge to your coordination and reflexes. They will also do a tremendous job in helping your responsive timing and attention.
My favourite is:
Gaining Experience to improve reflex
This is something that you will do overtime when you use or coordinate all the training routines. Experience is something that comes with time, in the fighting arena, this statement holds more value. New-time fighters will have a hard time having a perfect reflex, as they will have to start slow, just like every fighter in the world. They all have to start off from the low, then eventually make their way to the top.
Relying on strength barely works, as you will spend all of your time using your stamina on avoiding moves than landing one on the opponent. Defense is necessary to win a fight, especially when you’re exhausted. All you can rely on there is the footwork and the reflex to carry you to the winning zone. When you understand the attack pattern and the movies that your opponent will try to throat you, your body will react to each move on its own. This Is A great way for you to dodge the heavy attacks and look for a window to strike down with a furious blow.
Conclusion
While there are various ways to master and better your reflex skill, it all comes down to you picking the technique that you are comfortable with. All techniques will do a great job in giving you fighting insects tradeoff any attack and effectively counter it in a matter of seconds. When you get enough training, your body will be able to perform the move on its own without putting any pressure on your brain.