Speed
You can defeat strength, but not speed. Nobody can dodge a bullet. SPEED is your worst enemy! What?
Everyone is impressed by Bruce Lee’s speed. Everyone was impressed at Mohammed Ali’s boxing speed. In the cowboy days, the quick draw was the thing. A gun can be drawn out within four tenths of a second or for those mathematically inclined 0.40 of a second. Human reaction time is about 0.25 seconds. The Clint Eastwood movies capitalized on the idea speed, which set those movies apart from all other cowboy movies.
There is a saying: “You can defeat strength but not speed.” There are ways, within limits, to handle strength, one of which is to use speed. Nobody can beat almost any animal because of the animals instinctive extreme speed at which they act and react. However when talking about humans, an untrained human has speed limitations caused by inefficient movements. An old fencing Master can often keep up with younger and faster students by being able to read their intentions ahead of time and that comes from years and years of experience.
All professional martial artists are fast no matter what the style. Among humans, there is not that much speed difference among athletes trained for speed. Of course there can only be one record holder for speed.
Wing Chun is designed for SPEED. Through repetitive practice of anything you become faster at doing the activity. But there also are various other factors at play when talking about human speed. Genetic factors in the form of fast twitch muscles are also at play.
Wing Chun tries to gain a speed advantage by making movements smaller. Small movements are faster than large movements. Wing Chun is designed around the idea of economy of movement in order to get a gain in speed.
When new beginners join up they naturally only think in terms speed and strength. They don’t understand the idea of slowing down their practice to gain eventual speed. One martial arts exert that we taught, only had one speed. His speedometer was always set at 100 miles an hour, no matter what he did. He said “How can I know if something really works or not if I don’t train at speed?” One year he went to Germany to see their Wing Chun in action. What he saw there confirmed in his mind what he has always had been saying: that martial arts should be practiced at great speed. He mentioned that their speed was just incredible.
I mentioned this to my teacher at the time who was Dr. G.K. Khoe. My teacher said he was not impressed with European speed. He said many martial artists have fast hands but even martial artists at the Master level often hid their many mistakes using speed.
As an example of what he said, I can do a very fast Lap sau or grabbing hand on beginning students. There is no way for them to block it. They always get hit. However if I did the same kind of action against a professional who knows what he is doing then I always get hit first performing the same action on them.
With the beginning student I can be less precise to gain a small speed advantage. Less precision means my elbow position is not quite correct. A good Wing Chun guy would immediately capitalize on my error and punch me before I am half way through with my Lap sau hit. As soon as I touch an experts hand to grab, I am already hit if my elbow is out of position. To not get hit I have to slightly slow down, take care of where my elbow is first and then I can do the fast grab and punch. So by doing something slower, I actually get there faster.
In physics some of this counter intuitive stuff also happens. Everyone knows the saying that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. For martial arts action, this is the case and that’s why Wing Chun starts off with the straight non-telegraphed punch. However in the case of an inclined plane the shortest distance is not the fastest path. Nature has a way to make longer curved distances faster. My son investigated this idea for a grade five science fair project which was called the “Brachistochrone problem.” The project won first place because of his understanding and explanation of the complex math.
The photo shows Raegan Van Raamsdonk trying to understand some of the math involved for his grade 5 project to show that the straight line is not always the quickest path.
The curve of fastest descent is not a straight or polygonal line (blue) but a cycloid (red).
In the Physics case, the ball rolling or sliding down the ramp gains speed because of the initial acceleration which allows the ball to overtake the ball sliding down the shortest distance straight line path. Some advanced math called the Calculus of Variations is required to prove this but it is easy to demonstrate. However in the case of martial arts it doesn’t make sense to send our fist along this kind of curve.
The Karate mid level block is a slower concept than the Wing Chun Tau sau or Palm up hand turn. However if a beginner in Wing Chun compares speed with a seasoned Karate fighter they still will lose but with two people having equal training and physical characteristics the Wing Chun way should win. Who wins in a real fight depends of course on many more factors than this race between two techniques.
In Chinese Philosophy and even in Western thought, the number five comes up a lot. In Chinese philosophy there is the five element theory which is used in Chinese medicine, in martial arts (the five element fist in Xing Yi), the five element form in Hung Gar etc.
The number 108 which is popular in Buddhism is a number with astronomical roots. The number of suns that can fit between the earth and the sun is 108. There is a temple in China with 108 sides. The Buddhist have a prayer necklace with 108 beads. There is a famous Chinese story called the “Water Margin” story where there are 108 heroes consisting of 72 earthly figures and 36 heavenly figures. In western geometry a pentagon has five sides, making the angle between the sides 108 degrees. That requires a little bit of geometry to understand. Also traditionally we were said to have five senses, sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. Whoever designed us also liked math and the number five.
So getting off this tangential diversion into Chinese philosophy and Western math, a Wing Chun Master by the name of Kenneth Chung said there are five factors in martial arts which should be trained in that order. He said the five factors for Wing Chun training should be to train position first, then train sensitivity, then train timing, then speed and finally strength. In the beginner mind the order is just speed and then strength but these can be overcome by the first three factors.
1. Position
2. Sensitivity
3. Timing
4. Speed
5. Strength
Ken’s teacher was Leung Sheung, the first officially listed student of Ip Man in Hong Kong. His teacher told him that the three most important things in Wing Chun are: 1) position, 2) position and 3) position. The first form teaches position, the wooden dummy teaches position.
If you look at the case of driving a car and trying to merge with fast moving traffic then if you start from too far back, you never can get the proper timing to merge.
If you are trying to enter into the space of a fast kicker and you start from a distance that is too far away, then you never will be able to enter into the space of the kicker before being kicked.
One training method we had was to quickly close the distance between you and the kicker. Then when you get within an inch of the kickers reach, you play within that inch in order to get the timing to get in. Against the fastest TaeKwonDo kickers, who can kick you as you blink, it could take years of training to get in. A similar problem occurs in fast knife defense. It’s very difficult if not impossible to close in on someone who is fast with a knife. Certainly if your distancing, awareness/sensitivity and timing is off then you will always fail.
There is a Chinese martial arts lady on YouTube who practices the snake style of Kung Fu. Snakes are known for their very fast strikes. A lab decided to test out her speed against a real snake. For the real snake they slowly pushed a balloon towards the snake. As soon as the balloon reached a critical distance, the snake struck and popped the balloon. They used this experiment to time the snake.
For he Kung Fu lady, they set up a moving randomly bobbing head. The lady was to track the movements of the head and then strike the head exactly in the eyes. Surprisingly, even to the lady martial artist, she was faster than the snake. This tells me: “Don’t underestimate a ladies capabilities.” If you allow this lady to get within range then you are certainly done for.
.