From Webster: an automatic and often inborn response to a stimulus that involves a nerve impulse passing inward from a receptor to a nerve center and thence outward to an effector (as a muscle or gland) without reaching the level of consciousness.
Why do some of us have faster reflexes then others? Is there anything we can do about losing them with age? Is there anything we can do to control the subconscious nature and results of the reflex?
To answer these questions I think we have to get a little better idea of why the reflex happens as opposed to what it is. Yes the reflex is a response to a stimulus that makes us do something, but isn’t what we do even more important than the reflex itself? If we are one 10th of a second faster in our reflex but we freeze instead of flight or fight what good was the time savings? If we swung a fist instead of freezing and that created the wrong conclusion, then what was the time savings worth?
In anything that happens we have a reflex that is both natural and to an extent genetically predisposed. We also have the piece of the reflex that is socially taught and/or trained. These two mix. You can train the natural or what I like to call pure reflex to be faster and to stay faster with age. We can also train the reflex to do the right thing at the right time.
The pure reflex is pretty easy to train and the good thing is that you can train it while you’re training the subconscious movement or result of the reflex. Training in a reality-based martial art or fighting system is one of the best ways I’ve found to train both the pure reflex and the subconscious result.
The specifics – More later…. Got to get to class now.