My takeaway from the 3/13/08 Master's lesson is: if you want to hit harder or block better, do it faster. Those who enjoyed physics will remember that the kinetic energy of a body is one half of its mass times its velocity squared. Kinetic energy, the thing that does the damage when one object strikes another, is much more dependent on how fast it's traveling than how heavy it is. That's why bullets are so lethal, and why "speed kills" on the roadway.

Some people are blessed with quick reflexes and lots of "fast twitch" muscle. But everyone can learn to move faster with training. How? Several ways. For example:

1. Make smaller motions. Where you might show a large range of motion in a form, in an application you make the minimum motion necessary to do the job. If you're blocking, block just enough to prevent yourself from being struck, but no more. Any more than the minimum is wasted motion, and wasted time you could be turning into a counter-attack.

2. Put more energy into it. More thrust equals faster acceleration and higher final velocity. An important way to get more thrust is to use more of your body in generating your power. Moving from the hips and spine, and being "whippy" are avenues--but it's tricky, because if you wait for your large, high-mass components like your torso to move, that will slow you down. So you should work on being able to pivot on the ball and heel of your feet (much faster than flat-footed), and being well-aligned and well-balanced, so that you can turn but move only the minimum mass while doing so. Experienced martial artists are lazy. They only move what they have to, and they conserve the rest of their energy.

3. Relax. If throwing a punch for example, your fist should be tight, but your arm and shoulder should be relaxed. Throw the punch like a "rock in a sock." If your shoulder and arm is tense, you will just expend energy overcoming that resistance, and you'll be slower. There are some good qigong exercises for hard fists, relaxed arms. (A related point made by Master Adams was that as Iron Body training progresses, you learn to only clench and defend certain parts of your body; the rest remain relaxed. In traditional Chinese terms, you direct your intention (yi) to a given part of the body, and the qi (a.k.a. chi) will follow.)

A final, cautionary note: Don't practice for speed too early, or too often. Get the form and alignment right first. Fast but sloppy isn't powerful or accurate, and the apparent high power of a fast move easily masks basic weaknesses. Faster means more strain, and you want to make sure you're doing things right, with good alignment and form, before you subject your irreplaceable joints to those high stresses. If you want to move quickly, at least intermix the speed training with slow reps on which you perfect your form. Slow-slow-fast, slow-medium-fast, or slow-fast combinations can help you combine practice at getting good form with practice achieving fast motion.