The Death of Mystical Martial Arts

In the Martial Arts there are legends of people with mystical abilities. These people are unbeatable, they are faster, they are stronger, and ordinary people can’t touch them. Of course there have always been people with superior abilities, but I am talking about something else here. I am talking about people who can see what you’re going to do before you do it.

This intuitive ability sounds mystical, but it isn’t. It’s the result of classical martial arts training over years. Unfortunately, most systems have dropped this kind of training. In the interests of financial survival they water down techniques for children, and the result is fun and games that never cause any real pain…or gain.

In this article I’m going to outline one such exercise. This exercise was done in Kang Duk Won Korean Karate classes back in the sixties and seventies. It was brutal, but it worked. The exercise was referred to as ‘Speed of Speed.’

Speed of Speed is similar in concept to the Japanese concept of Mushin No Shin, or ‘Mind of No Mind.’ Mind of No Mind is the fact of learning to ignore the distractions presented by your own mind. Without your mind you are nothing but awareness; the mind acts as a filter, it slows you down.

Instead of acting, one reacts. Instead of knowing what somebody is going to do, one has to think about it, figure out a response, begin a defense, and…OW! You just got hit. You were so busy playing with your mind that his punch went sailing on through to your nose.

The mind is a wonderful thing…not.

Speed of Speed consisted of facing a partner. The target is a backhand slap to the shoulder. Your partner moves, and you move ‘faster.’ Which is fine for a black belt, he sails on through and smacks your shoulder. Doesn’t hurt much, but it’s frustrating. How is he so fast?

But he’s not fast, he’s seen people do that move so often he has become bored, bored with the pain, and trained himself not to involve the mind in his reaction/action.

After a year you get better, and it starts to hurt more. You are starting to speed up, get faster, but you are still at such a low level that your forearm hits his forearm, and it HURTS! This is one of the places where people quit. They thought they were going to get a mystical ability without having to pay for it in pain.

Those who continue suffer the pain, and something quite miraculous occurs: one day it doesn’t hurt. You blink, you try to figure it out, then you realize that pain is a body response, it is a mental reaction to things that impact on your body, and…YOU DON’T HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO IT!

The first time this happened to me was with the weather. It was a hot day and everybody was wilting. I wasn’t, and I actually stared around in wonder at these people who listened to their mind and suffered.

But class was the real place it happened. I would be doing Speed of Speed, forearms smacking, and…it just didn’t hurt. And because I had disengaged the mind as to what pain was, I began not to speed up, but to see when the other person was going to move. Speed of Speed wasn’t about moving faster, it was about moving before the other fellow does.

My senses weren’t impeded by pain, I wasn’t looking through the filter of my mind. I was perceiving directly, as a unit of awareness without anything to act as a barrier.

It took me three years to reach this stage. When I did achieve this ability, simultaneously with my mastery of forms and techniques and freestyle, I was awarded a black belt. But this ability to see what was going to happen seeped into other areas of my life. I could sense when cars were going to swerve into my lane. I could sense when lights were going to turn green. Heck, on a good day the lights would all be green. I began to see when people were able to be trusted. I saw many things and became a different person.

Unfortunately, the thing that got me through, Speed of Speed, and a handful of other simple exercises, are no longer taught, and the only record of them is in such articles as this. And the only people who are going to achieve this/these abilities are the ones who read my articles and books, and who are willing to explore strange concepts and suffer a bit of pain. Sometimes a lot of pain.

About the author: Al Case walked into his first martial arts dojo in 1967. He has written extensively of the martial arts he studieed in such books as The Last Martial Arts Book, and How to Fix Karate. His website is MonsterMartialArts.com