While practising martial arts with us, where children learn skills like strength, agility, focus, coordination and balance, there comes an another skill which is considered as of extreme importance and that is Speed. It affects most of the performance when in a combat situation. In order to get speed trained basic conditional requirement including flexibility, agility and strength should be met. On completion of basic conditioning allows us as a team to train a child further for more intensive exercises that develop explosive power. In this way muscles starts to developed which supports skill refinement. We keep an eye on children skills and try to eliminate unnecessary movement which ultimately increases bio-mechanical efficiency and hence the speed.
Training for speed is not only a physical exercise but mental as well where muscles are trained to become stronger thereby releasing more power and, at the same time, speed should be focused as a major goal when training for it. For instance keeping we train to keep muscles relaxed while training and program in a way to tense just the right ones that are involved in a specific movement will offer maximum efficiency for the muscles involved and the minimal energy dissipation in unnecessary movements.
Factors conditioning speed:
- The amount of rapid contractions that one has
- Anaerobic work capabilities
- Amount of body fat
- Relative strength
- Flexibility and freedom of movement
- Techniques
- Improving any one of these factors will make faster.
Factors that condition agility:
- Reaction time
- Hand-eye coordination
- Central nervous system (CNS)
- Balance
- Flexibility
- Speed
- Strength
Exercises for speed without weights:
Acceleration sprints: We allow kids to do sprint less than 50 meters by sorting distance which may start from any position, we often play a flash of light to work on their reaction time too.
Long Sprints: 100 to 200 meters to reach maximum speed and work on kid’s anaerobic capacity. Again, it’s a good idea to start with a whistling, clapping, or visual stimulus to work on their reaction time.
Fartlek: In this we combine sorting and long spring with a continuous run and other exercises to work on both aerobic and anaerobic system.
Reaction exercises: designed to improve your reaction time by using a visual or auditory stimulus.
Agility exercises are designed to get the athlete to change direction quickly and accurately. The goal is to improve coordination, balance, speed and power.
One more important thing to improve other then speed and agility is the ability to relax. Therefore, we also provide children a comfortable environment where we allow them to do different mental exercises, games, meditation, breathing exercises which help them to heal and rejuvenate. The more they are able to relax, the more kinetic energy they can store in tendons, and the faster will be able be to move from eccentric muscle contraction to concentric muscle contraction, displaying a greater reaction force.