Or is this something that one is just born with?
(I’m talking about as petaining to Boxing or Kick boxing type sports)
[WAG]
you are born with a predefined range. you can increase within your range by practice, but you can’t go outside the range. Thus someone born with a ‘better’ range will always be able to beat you.
[/WAG]
Another WAG:
As you learn the discipline, you become more aware of what your opponent will do and how to either counteract or take advantage of that. Even if your actual (physical) reaction time is no different, your time-to-awareness of the situation will become much shorter, allowing you to appear to have quicker reactions. This apperance is a real advantage, in that you are actually blocking/dodging/striking more quickly.
No scientific/etc anything to back it up, but 8 years of MA training has taught me that this is correct. Additionally, the more you do those particular movements (kicks, dodges, punches, etc), the faster they’ll get. Eventually, it’ll be nearly instinctual - see something coming and duck, without really thinking about it.
As many have suggested here I think the biggest component of “reflexes” is making an action just that…a reflex.
Your response time will be slow when you are presented with an unfamiliar situation or want to perform an action your are not very used to doing. Your brain will need time to process its inputs then decide on a course of action and then follow through adjusting as it goes for unanticipated changes in the situation. All of that takes time and makes you slower. A person who has practiced a great deal, say a boxer, will not even “think” much about what they are doing and rather react instinctually. They have “seen” it all before and been through the decision making process of what to do when presented with a given situation so many times they have reduced or eliminated the conscious processing time and simply react.
That said there can actually be a pphycial component to this. Muscles are comprised of “fast twitch” and “slow twitch” muscles and they work as their names suggest. The percentage of these muscles in a human body are roughly 50/50 but are determined genetically and can vary between individuals. Olympic athletes tend to have a good deal of one over the other compared to the general populace (sprinter would benefit from fast twitch, marathon runner from slow twitch…the “slow version” is slower but more efficient). AFAIK intensive training can allow a person to change this percentage in their own bodies but it is more a genetically determined thing overall. So, you might up your fast twitch muscles a bit.
My only other question to add to this is time perception. Some of you may have experienced this when in a sudden, life threatening situation. For instance I experienced this in a automobile accident that didn’t quite happen. After the near accident happened I was floored that perhaps only 5 seconds (if that) had passed. To me those few seconds felt like 30 seconds. More than felt, I was thinking, assessing, steering, braking and so on very consciously so when it was done and remembering all that went through my mind I could not comprehend how it all squished in to those few moments. So, question is can some learn to extend their perception of time? Essentially slowing everything down giving them more time to make decisions? I sometimes wonder if beyond the amazing athleticism of people like Michael Jordan or Barry Sanders didn’t also have a component of being able to see things in slower action than those around them that added that extra something that made them truly remarkable athletes.
I agree with all the not-so WAGs so far stated. There is a lot that can be learnt to improve reflexes, and also tricks (such as noticing the tension in an opponent that ‘telegraphs’ they are about to attempt to strike) that make reflexes seem faster. I find being relaxed but focussed is the most effective state to be in for fast reflexes. If you feel edgy you tend to be slower reacting, and more likely to rect at the wrong time. My self I find my reflexes are generally not so fast, but very occasionally they can be scarily fast. I don’t know how they are occasionally so fast, but when they are I am always relaxed allert and very calm
Word for word this is EXACTLY what I’ve often wondered myself…
To some degree, reflexes depend on brute strength too. even if the neurons are firing at the same speed, stronger fast-twitch muscles can make your body move to the right place faster, and more accurately.
Watching slow motion footage of Muhammad Ali boxing has convinced me that this is really possible. He looks like he is moving at regular speed, while his opponent moves in slow motion. You see his opponent start to throw a punch, then you see Ali visibly notice it, and casually move out of the way. Then Muhammad throws a jab, and his opponent doesn’t react until his head snaps back.
I think I read somewhere that the FBI calls that “slow time.” I’ve only experienced it once, when I was about 12 yrs old, and remember it vividly to this day, some 20+ years later.
I don’t know how it’s related to reflexes, if at all, or if it can be channeled into speeding up your responses, but I’ve always thought the same thing, that being able to control that phenomenon would allow you to make some wickedly fast decisions in “real time.”
FYI: Fast twitch muscles are not stronger than slow twitch muscles. They are about the same in terms of power output. Fast twitch just do their thing at a higher rate (so in that sense they are more powerful as they can do their thing more times in a given set of time…just each contraction is not more powerful). The trade off is the are less efficient users of oxygen and produce more lactic acid than slow twitch which goes to the endurance side of the equation.
For instance, I seem to recall somewhere that cats have a very high percentage of fast twitch muscles which seems to jibe with what we observe. Cats can be lightning fast but they poop out pretty quickly. IIRC a Cheetah can only maintain top speed for 60 seconds then absolutely must stop. Compare that to a horse that can run flat out for much longer. This goes to the ambush style cats employ but they have a narrow window in which to succeed or most things they chase will outrun them in the long run.
People also lose fast twitch muscles as they age, right? Which is why athletes “lose a step” as they get older.
FYI, Oliver Sacks had a recent article in the New Yorker that talked about stuff like this. I can’t find it online right now, but you may want to keep an eye out for it.