Everybody wants to be fast, and the top two questions I get are always about developing speed and power. Rarely does a student want to get cleaner, or more precise (though these do happen). Speed and Power, it seems, are the Holy Grail of martial arts training. Not that it’s unwarranted – speed and power are immediate (one hopes), tangible gains that have a visceral impact on the ability to defend oneself and increase confidence.
In fact, much of Kenpo is based on the value of speed. Speed (Acceleration) is half the formula for Force (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080427162718AAQ6oBm). And, if I remember my physics correctly, if you double the acceleration you quadruple the Force. So, it’s an important part of Force.
The old mantra you should try to remember is “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. When you practice something properly, you get better, and as you get better, you get faster; remember when you learned to tie your shoes? It probably took you several minutes of trying…maybe you even recited that rhyme (I never remembered it, so it was no help to me). But you kept doing it, everyday. Maybe more than once a day. And you got – FASTER! Not because you were trying to be fast, but because you got good at it, and then you relaxed about it. Alot of speed will be eaten up by muscle tension when you try to go fast. If you don’t believe me, time yourself tieing your shoes (or something else you do alot), then time yourself when everyone is waiting and you’re in a hurry; the stress will tighten you up and slow you down. So you need to forget about speed for a bit while you build it up, then when you start to feel faster, you’ll relax (because you feel faster), and you’ll get faster still.
Okay, so how does this help your Kenpo? Here’s how. Pick something you want to practice – a technique, a piece of a form, a sparring combination, whatever. Got it? Good, here we go (for the sake of being able to play along, I’ll do Five Swords – is that what you picked?). We’re going to practice making this smooooooooooth, so you don’t have any hard start and stops, no sharp turns, no jerky motions. The trick is to think about the next move while you’re doing the current one.
Ex.: (remember, I’m doing Five Swords) Step in and block with the right hand – do the step and block slowly and smoothly, try half speed to start, and BEFORE the block lands, start thinking about the right hand chop. If you’re doing it right, you probably just transitioned into the chop without finishing the block. This is good, we’re working on smooth, not precise, so skipping some stuff and being a little sloppy is ok. If you’re one of our many students that started off in a traditional style, this will be very hard for you to accept, but it is okay. Trust me.
Now, before that chop lands, start thinking about the heel palm – good! I see your left hand started to move before your right stopped! You’re getting it! But don’t lock in that forward bow. That’s a Bozo Nono. You don’t need to camp out in a stance that leaves your balance directionalized and your center line exposed any more than you need to take a monster truck into a parking garage (is that too obscure an analogy?). No, in fact you will…
Be thinking of the uppercut and smoooooothly moving into it before you have any chance of ruining that nice light rack…uh, locking in that Forward Bow. Then, off into the first chop (left), and sliding, not pivoting, into the final chop. If you made ANY cool smacking sounds or breathed hard anywhere in this, you screwed up. It’s okay, nobody saw you, so try it again without all the cool stuff. Keep on working it, in fact, if you did one technique (or whatever you were working on) for the entire five minutes that you practice today, you should start to see some improvement.
Why is smooth fast? Same reason the beltway is (generally) faster than driving through the city. You don’t have to stop and start and stop. All that stop start stuff takes alot of energy…in fact, I think that’s physics too (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion)! So, by keeping constantly in motion, rounding off your corners, and staying smooth, you will improve your overall speed.
Practice diligently, and you will be as fast as Mr James or even Joe Palanzo himself!
Mr J