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, ŇThe 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.Ó

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 opponentŐs 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 trainŐs 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.

Attitude:

Attitude is the ability to think quickly. You must be mentally prepared. Once you know you are going to fight, you must resolve not to quit until the enemy is defeated and you can escape safely. You must also decide to attack as many times as you can, as quickly as you can. Commit before the fight that you will not quit until your enemy is defeated.

Flexibility:
Flexibility, when put into practice, allows you to adapt to any fighting situation. Lau Tzu, a Taoist Master said, "Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water, yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better; it has no equal. The weak can overcome the strong; the supple can overcome the stiff. Under heaven everyone knows this, yet no one puts it into practice." Like water, flexibility never forces its course of action. It is fluid. It flows from one movement to another without hesitation, yet it never clashes force with force. It rules by yielding to its surroundings.

Sensory Overload:
Sensory overload is a principle based on a very basic scientific fact. It has to do with the short term memory. The short term memory has a very specific function. Information from millions of tiny sensors or nerves throughout the body send information to the brain. Information received by the brain is instantly placed in the short term memory where it is quickly analyzed. The brain decides whether or not the information is useful. Then the information is either sent to the long term memory as useful information, or is thrown away as useless junk. The one drawback of the short term memory is that it if it receives information faster than it can process it, it gets backed up. It is basically overloaded.

To use this principle to your benefit in a physical confrontation, you must send unmanageable amounts of information to your opponent's brain so his short term memory will overload. You do this by delivering a rapid succession of blows to several different targets or sensor nerves on his body. His brain will be able to deal with the first few blows, but after the third or fourth one he will begin to experience "sensory overload." If you leave no time between blows for analysis, his short term memory will not be able to deal with the volume of information being sent to it. In effect, the enemy will be paralyzed as long as your attacks continue. The enemy will be thrown off balance mentally and often physically.

Straight Line:
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. When you are fighting, always attack the closest target, and attack it in a straight line. If the enemy's arm is closer to you than his face, forget the face and attack the arm. If you attack the target closest to you, it will more than likely give way to more desirable targets. Think of what would happen if you and the enemy threw a punch at the same time. Assuming both of you are moving at the same speed and the enemy threw a curved punch while you threw a straight punch, your punch would land first and his attack would be nullified. A curved punch loses more power than a straight punch. There are two reasons this happens. First, the curved punch has to travel a greater distance. Second, it simply takes more energy to move in a circular fashion than in a straight line. You have greater power if energy is devoted to a straight punch.

If students of Wing Chun practice these principles of speed, they will find themselves on the path that leads to mastery. Mastery requires practice and knowledge. Practice and knowledge are endless dimensional cycles of learning. So practice to verify and develop these principles of speed for yourself. These simple and elegant principles will transform your fighting ability.

About the author: Master Ron Heimberger is a direct disciple of Grandmaster Ip Ching (younger son of Grandmaster Ip Man) and presides as the President of the Wing Chun Kung Fu Council. Along with Garner Train and Sam Chan, Master Heimberger directs the Ip Ching Wing Chun Athletic Association. Anyone wishing to become a certified instructor or member may write directly to Master Heimbergr at P.O. Box 2158 Orem Ut 84059 or phone 435-866-7133, or visit us on the Internet at www.wckfc.com.

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