In sports a second can be the difference between a winning and losing. As the competition gets better reaction time is critical. For example stuffing a take down in the final seconds of a fight can get your hand lifted at the end or send you back home a loser. I have been doing my research and reading a lot on reaction time. Strength and conditioning coaches all know it is an important component to training. All athletes should be working on improving their reaction time.
So what is reaction time? Reaction time is the interval time between the presentation of a stimulus and the initiation of the muscular response to that stimulus. Some examples in combat sports such as MMA or boxing are avoiding a punch with say a slip or bob and being able to sprawl in time when you see a takedown coming.
Some athletes and people are born with great reaction time. But that does not mean that you cannot increase the ability of your reaction time with practice. In a fight there are many different stimulus’s a fighter must react to. Within those stimuli there can be many different reactions. The more choices a fighter has in ways to react the slower the reaction time will be. So when starting off training reaction time you want to keep it simple with your fighters. You may want to start off with giving them only one choice to make. So say they are working on their boxing, Give them only the choice to parry a punch, as they get better add the slip.
These are some of the more sport specific ways to train reaction time. As a strength and conditioning coach you don’t have to be as sport specific in your training to start off. Using different exercises that we have done before you can add the element of reaction time within them.
In this training clip I incorporate medicine ball tosses with reaction time. So as you will see this thirty second set incorporates, power, acceleration, reaction time and conditioning. Focusing on the reaction time, after tossing the ball you must turn around track the medicine ball and react to where it is going and get to it before two bounces. As for reaction time it’s on an easier level because you kind of know where the ball may land. To make this harder have someone throw the ball for you then turn around and chase after it. So check out this video and more to come on training reaction time. Train Hard! Train Smart!
P.S. This was done the morning of my second anniversary. Happy Anniversary Baby!
