Friday, December 06, 2013

James W. DeMile - Intuitive Speed



In response to a question about Bruce speed

INTUITIVE SPEED

Bruce Lee felt it was critical to have sufficient distance between you and a potential aggressor so you could read his movement.


Intuitive speed is pure feeling. It is a feeling that something is about to happen. It is the seed of motion. It is the ability to know that the person is energizing or has made some sort of subconscious decision to make an action. This exercise is practiced in a stationary position so that you see the change of the body when he goes to do something. When the opponent is moving around, it is much more difficult to determine whether his forward bounce is an attack or a draw or an alive position.


If you are serious about getting good in your skill then you need to spend time working on both the intuitive speed and the ability to read setting-up for motion. Setting-up for motion means that the person is placing himself into a second position where he can kick or launch a hand strike. The opponent is doing something to give himself a base to go into his technique. This is not how you develop your intuitive sense because with reading motion, you are looking for a marked position.. In the intuitive sense, you are looking for the beginning of the action where it is based on the energy to move coming from the opponent. The intuitive speed is a feeling where you are trying to identify the source or the beginning of the action, whether it is energy or physical.


Intuitive speed is motion that is triggered by some psychological awareness that the opponent is just starting his attack or move. It is an awareness that something is about to move like a light is about to come on or something is about to fall but your mind is so sensitive that it knows when it is going to happen. It does not know that it is going to happen from a minute from now but it knows that it is about to start.


It is starting where the actual neurological connections are already to start to connect but it is just that the body has not moved yet. But by some strange reason you pick it up. This is the only possible way to explain Bruce Lee's reaction time. He had intuitive speed. Inuitive speed paired together with the startled reaction will build quite a combination and makes you unbelievably fast.


If you see somebody move and you move as a result of that motion then you are already behind that motion because he has already moved first. You might be fairly fast and maybe even block that strike. If the person starts to move and even before he can move where he is just starting his motion,you are aware of his intent and you are already hitting him. How do you do that? You must have in some way know that he was going to move in order to cover that distance. You not only needed to react where psychologically you knew it but you also needed for your body to react. You would have to have speed that would allow you to get there. The only thing that will allow the speed to get there is a startled reaction which is the fuel for motion.


We practiced the intuitive speed by a few different exercises. The quick draw, TV meditation,clapping drill and by sitting and watching students practice and see if we could identify when and how they were going to move, before they moved.


There were nine different elements of speed and this was only one of them.





Posted to Facebook Oct 5, 2013

You can contact Sijo James W. DeMile via his Wing Chun do Site or Facebook.


Please check out these other articles by Sijo DeMile:



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