If you’re into the striking of martial arts, then you know how important punching speed is. As someone with over 18 years of martial arts experience, I’ve explored numerous systems and seen many different approaches that try to teach you how to punch faster.
Over my years of practice, I’ve taken what works and taken it into my own martial arts practice. In this article, I’m going to give you 6 of the best ways, drills and exercises to be enable you to punch faster!
1. Perform Drills to Improve Punching Speed
The standard way of increasing your punching speed is using a speed bag or working more speed-focused heavy bag drills. But there are lots of other methods that can help too.
2. Use a Reflex Bag
Unlike heavy bags and speed bags, reflex bags use a spring mechanism to replicate offensive boxing movements.
Normally, this is done to help you practice your dodging. But the spring mechanism is also great at keeping you on your toes and it requires your hands to be quick.
Even if you don’t have the best reflex bag, you can use it to improve your punching speed.
3. Use Focus Mitts
Focus mitts are a great way to improve your punching speed, accuracy, and timing. They’re also a great tool, because with focus mitts you always have a partner to give you feedback.
They can help you identify if you’re telegraphing your moves, if your elbows are sticking out, etc. All you have to do is pick focus mitt drills that emphasize punching, rather than blocking or dodging.
4. Shadow Box with Dumbbells
Once you grab a pair of dumbbells, you’ll immediately feel your punches get slower. But it’s remarkable how quickly your body can get used to this added resistance, especially when you focus on maintaining your speed.
The most effective technique I’ve discovered is to alternate: shadow box for 30-45 seconds with the dumbbells, then another 30-45 seconds without, and repeat.
When you hold the dumbbells, your muscles work harder to offset the added load. Over time, your hands will adjust, and upon releasing the dumbbells, you’ll feel an immediate surge in speed as your body adapts to the absence of that additional weight.
With consistent practice, this higher speed becomes your new normal. This drill offers the additional advantage of raising your shoulder and arm endurance while promoting a tighter guard and preventing overextension in your punches.
However, a word of caution: this exercise may not be suitable for beginners. Without proper form, there’s a risk of injury, especially if you overextend your arms.
As for the ideal dumbbell weight, I’ve found the sweet spot to be between 2-5 lbs. If you’re on the heavier side, you can use a slightly heavier set.
Ultimately, the dumbbells should provide a noticeable challenge while still allowing you to maintain control and maneuverability.
5. Stay Relaxed
Regardless of what drills you’re doing, if speed is what you’re after, then you need to stay relaxed. The more tense you are, the slower you’ll be, it’s that simple.
When you begin to stiffen up, your instinctual response is to further tense up to compensate, unwittingly creating a counterproductive feedback loop. This cycle of tension ultimately makes your punches slower and easier to dodge.
The antidote for this is to be conscious and committed to being as relaxed as possible during speed-focused drills. At the first signs of tension, stop and relax your arms by shaking them.
Another crucial element is breathing. When you want power, exhaling while delivering a strike ensures that, by the time your punch lands, you’ve fully expelled your breath.
However, in the context of a fast combination, it’s not practical to exhale with each individual punch. Instead, it’s best to treat the combination as a unified sequence, maintaining a constant exhalation as you’re throwing your punches. This exhalation should end with the final hit of the combo.
6. Have the Right Mindset
Another aspect of punching faster is having the right mindset. Often, when people want to punch faster, they fixate on trying to speed up each individual punch.
Counterintuitively, this is wrong. When you concentrate on each punch separately, your moves tend to become stiffer and stiffer, and your overall punching speed decreases.
Our brains tend to break tasks into smaller pieces. So, if you instruct your brain to make every punch in a combination faster, it will diligently work on each punch while neglecting the transitions between them.
This can result in rapid punches but long pauses between them, as our brains tend to treat them as distinct tasks.
Similar to the concept of breathing, it’s better to view the combination as one fluid motion.
Instead of dwelling on individual punches, place your focus on retracting the very last punch in the combination as quickly as possible.
By honing in on this final movement, your brain will naturally optimize the speed of the entire sequence leading up to it.
This approach can be applied to individual punches as well. For example, when throwing a jab, don’t obsess about throwing it quickly. Instead, concentrate on pulling it back as fast as you can. As long as you keep this focus, your body will handle the rest.
