> set your keyboard repeat rate to 100 keys/s.

also, you can reduce the delay so that repetitions start sooner. With some practice and care you can reduce the delay to about 0.15 seconds and learn to fly over your keyboard

   xset r rate 150 255  # delay=150 (milliseconds) rate=255 (keys per second)

at this point it's faster and easier to click left arrow than ^A, but of course it's not for everybody...