Power of Speed

Ron Heimberger — 1970-01-01T00:00:00+17:00

Category: 訓練
Subtitle: Foundational

Origanally published in QiGong KungFu Magazine March 1999

By Master Ron Heimberger

Wing Chun students, just as other martial artists, once began a rigorous and thorough program of studying the higher principles and techniques of fighting in isolation from one another. Never satisfied with this disjointed approach to fighting, Leung Bik, Ip Man's Hong Kong teacher, imparted within the young Ip Man a sense of completeness. Although Wing Chun principles were many, Leung Bik taught that they flowed into one. The fundamental theme that Leung Bik taught was that the laws of nature become simpler and more elegant when explained in Wing Chun. One of the most thoughtful principles of completeness is speed. Elegant in its nature and simple in the discharge of technique, it expresses a key step in unifying the principles of Wing Chun.

Absolute Speed:

Perhaps the most intriguing concept to emerge from Wing Chun is that there are two types of speed, absolute speed, and relative speed. Absolute speed is determined by how fast your attack can move from its point of rest to its target. It is what gives power to any attacking movement. Absolute speed is useless unless an effective attack can be made against the opponent. No matter how the punch travels, it will do no good if the enemy can block it or attack first. Grandmaster Ip Ching said, The first great piece of the puzzle is that absolute speed must be mastered in the beginning, and that it is made up of a combination of principles. These principles are relaxation and strength.

Relaxation:

In The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski wrote: "The genius of men...lies in that: they ask transparent, innocent questions which turn out to have catastrophic answers. Einstein was a man who could ask immensely simple questions. Even though relaxation may seem strange and simple, it has desperately far reaching, paradoxical implications. For example, most people tense-up at just the thought of a confrontation. Wing Chun practitioners train to overcome this tendency. They train to relax. Relaxation unlocks more power and speed than can be imagined. A contemporary law derived from Newton's second law of motion (the kinetic energy formula) basically states that force equals mass multiplied by acceleration squared or force equals mass times acceleration squared. In other words, to increase your force, you must increase your mass or acceleration. To increase the mass behind an attack, one must relax. Relaxing the muscles has the same effect as increasing mass. For example, if you pick up a sleeping baby, you will notice that the baby seems heavier asleep than awake. In terms of fighting, properly relaxed muscles add greater amounts of mass or heaviness to the fist creating an increase in kinetic energy.

Another way to increase the mass of an attack is to increase the velocity of the attack. In fact, an increase in the velocity of an attack has a much greater impact on the force than an increase in mass. So why then will relaxation help increase speed and power? The answer is simple. When muscles are tense, they work against each other. When they are properly relaxed, they don't To observe the effect that tenseness has on the velocity or absolute speed of your attack, tense the fist as tightly as you can. Notice the cords in your wrist poping out. Without loosening the tension, try to throw a punch. Now relax your arm and throw another punch and notice the difference in speed.

Strength:

The second part of the kinetic energy formula states that speed is more vital to kinetic energy than mass. This assumption can be derived from fact that speed is squared in the kinetic energy formula. When most people think of increasing their strength, they think of weight lifting and body building. Yet this is not the kind of strength that will increase your fighting speed. Fighting power is built by practicing the things that will more than likely be happening in a fight. Practice punching in the air. Throw one thousand to four thousand punches every day and you will gain the type of strength that will help you punch faster. Do the same thing with your kicks. Throw a thousand kicks in the air every day. What ever moves you use when you fight, repeat them over and over again to develop strength. The greater familiarity, the greater the speed. The greater the speed, the greater the fighting power. When repeating your fighting movements, you must remember that you are not only doing it to practice your technique. You are also doing it to increase the strength needed for absolute speed.

Relative Speed:

But in the fighting world, speed is more complex than just miles per hour or feet per second. We must also consider relative speed. Relative speed refers to your speed relative to your opponentÕs speed. Though it is not the kind of speed that can be measured in miles per hour, it it is the kind of speed that enables the practitioner to beat the enemy to the punch. To get a better idea of what relative speed is, imagine yourself standing in the middle of a train track. About two hundred yards away a train is speeding toward you at about eighty miles per hour. The train has great speed, and an incredible amount of power. As long as you stay right where you are, the train has the ability to destroy you. But all you have to do to take away the train's ability to destroy you is to move aside. When you step aside, the train has absolute speed but no relative speed. Without relative speed, it can do you no harm. Like absolute speed, relative speed is made up of a handful of sub-principles. They are attitude, flexibility, sensory overload, and straight line.

Ving Tsun Ip Ching Athletic Association :: Article

Power of Speed