Hearing Improvement Drills

Note that this page is for improving environmental awareness as a martial artist via auditory signals. These are not drills to improve a hearing impairment, if you have an auditory medical issue please consult a physician for advice.

Drills

• Heavy Cardio: This holds true for many small parts of the body with small capillary beds such as eyes, ears, fingers. The more you have regular heavy cardio the more blood flow these areas get to keep them healthy. It also releases other metabolites and hormones that will make you more aware and thus have a small improvement in hearing.

• Noise filtering: Start with a song/sound being played through a speaker. Focus on your martial arts instructor speaking or drill. Add another speaker playing something different, continue to focus on the single drill. Continue to add sounds and focus on only a single one. Which will help you disregard ambient noise in the environment

• Sound Sourcing: In an open [or advanced un open] space close your eyes/blind fold yourself and have a partner pick an angle and distance away from you and make/play [bell, ect.] a sound and you need to try and pin point them. This can be adapted with having the blinded person throw a bean bag at their partner so they can judge distance. Also upon making the sound the noisemaker can perform a simple attack, or than an attack will also only com after a particular noise.

These are just a few basic ways to improve hearing, they can easily be combined with each or other drills. Be creative and use your ears.
For more on the anatomy of the ear or strikes to the ear please refer back the Ear page.

Reference Sources

1. Some ideas adapted from "How to Improve your Hearing" http://www.wikihow.com/Improve-Your-Hearing 04/13-16