How Are Your Reflexes

If you participate in any sport, you know your reflexes play an important role in whether you’ll be a champion or not. Improving your reflex time isn’t just for athletes. It also plays an important role for people not involved in sports. If you’ve ever helplessly watched a precious fragile item fall, knowing it will smash into hundreds of pieces, but not able to move quickly enough to catch it, you’ve already experienced the frustration of slow reflex time. Now consider all the times on the road where fast reflex time is important or times when moving quickly enough can prevent injury.

Reflex time comes in three stages.

Seeing the danger or problem is the first stage. It’s that cup falling, ball heading toward you or a punch coming your way, if you’re kickboxing. Mentally the process of deciding what to do then takes place, whether it’s try to grab the cup, dodge or catch the ball or duck or counter the punch. Finally, your reflex depends on how quickly that thought communicates to your body and the speed of your reaction. For those involved in kickboxing, it makes the difference between a successful counter-move or possibly losing the match.

Training to improve your reflex time helps tremendously.

Learning how to improve the identification of a problem, then improve your reaction time and speed in handling is the best way to see a huge improvement in reaction time. Some people suggest running at top speed in a wooded area helps. That will help overall reaction time but in kickboxing, you’re reacting to specific stimuli. It’s all about effectively reacting to your opponents moves.

Effective reflexes in kickboxing are well trained and often not a natural reaction.

A reaction to a punch could be anywhere from a counter-punch to panic! That’s why it takes hours of training to know the appropriate move and way to overcome, not succumb, to your opponents offensive moves. Knowing when to counter-punch and when to use a defensive move comes with training and experience. You train for the potential stimuli.

No matter how fast your reflexes, if you aren’t training for specific stimuli–such as punches and kicks—you won’t improve in kickboxing.

Using the right focus is important. If you want to improve your reflexes when in the ring, make sure your training includes training that simulates having punches thrown at you.

When you have trained reflexes, you don’t have to think about your reaction. It just happens.

Good trainers will insure you include training exercises that will help you in the ring.