Tim Larkin, in When Violence is the Answer1:
When you’re training to protect yourself and others, speed always comes last.
Learn the move slowly. And drill it slowly, as perfectly as possible. If you can’t do the move slow, you don’t know the move. Students often go fast, thinking it’ll make up for not really understanding the technique. Sometimes it works. It’s better to truly understand it though.
I sometimes hear a student say, “I need to train fast because in a fight, I need to be fast.” It’s true, speed is important, but in a fight, you’ll be going fast automatically because of anxiety and increased heart rate. If you have sloppy technique in class, it’s going to be worse in a real confrontation.
Using speed to compensate for poor technique can work because 50% technique with 100% conviction can be effective. Especially when rolling. But you don’t want to practice for the fresh blue belt. You want to practice for the black belt.
If you prioritize speed, not only will the results be terrible, but you’ll create a negative feedback loop where those terrible results convince you that you’re still too slow— so maybe you’ll take the wrong lesson and speed up even more, which will further cement bad habits and poor performance. This is not a sustainable path to mastery of anything, because it makes it impossible to learn from your mistakes.
Daniel Coyle, who wrote The Talent Code2, offers the analogy of sledding down a hill. As you go down, you create a groove. And each time you go again, the groove gets deeper, so that every trip down is down the same path. It’s the same with learning. You’re creating these grooves and the more you practice something, the more you’ll do it the same way. And the harder it’ll be to go down a new path. So work to learn to do the technique right. Your mind and body will get the pattern of movement correct. When you need it in a high stress situation, it’ll be automatic.