practice in front of a mirror and work on your footwork.  If you are slower  than your opponent you have to be able to take away the target and then counter instead of beating him to the punch.  You have to use your feet to take away a score while putting you into a position to exploit the open his attack provided. 

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Was that hands up and chin down, or the other way around?

When sparring i always try to work on 30-45 degree angles rather than 90 degrees. Try not to move back and forward, left to right.

For example if someone is attacking you, say a side kick for argument sake, you could move straight back, or to the side, but i always try to move forward past the kick at about 30 degrees with a counter, turning kick, reverse punch or something. As your moving on the angle past the atttacker by the time they adjust you are already scoring and moving past and you carry on your movement through.

Angles have always worked very well for me.

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TAE KWON DO FOREVER

Have a non-tkd friend or family member switch a light on/off or blow a whistle or something and react to that type of stimuli

firemanandxmarine wrote: swing a ball from the tree kick it as it swings.  use a swing kicking or punching bag.  swing it and move aside counter. oh make friends and train them thats what i had to do.

http://www.karatedepot.com/striking-bags.html

get one of these. 

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i'm delicious