Whether you study Tae Kwon Do, Kenpo, or that rare Wudan Art from Faroutistan, speed is vitally important to the martial arts. If you are going to get anywhere in freestyle, you must be faster than your foe. Even in the doing of your patterns, speed gives a certain instruction that is necessary to the successful martial artist.

That said, there is another facet to the subject of speed, a facet which embraces the entire martial arts and is the mark of your progress over the decades. This is a side which relates to the speed of the art you are studying, and the speed of what is happening inside your head and in your day to day life. I am talking about the speed at which you execute your art.

The beginner is totally excited by the fun of the martial arts, and he races breakneck through his kata. He spends hours studying and adjusting his form, studying the angles of his limbs so as to maximize speed of launch. Usually, this process takes about three years, but it can take lesser, or longer, depending on the individual and the art he is learning.

Remember what I remarked about spending hours going over your form? This is the start of the intermediate student, this is where he first starts to learn that the art is more than just exuberance and gotcha, but a real live window into the soul and potentials of humanity that were hitherto undreamed of. This is the start of growing awareness, and this is where the student first starts slowing himself down and starts looking at what he is actually doing.

This intermediate level is worked on by all of the hard artists, they spend hours doing their forms and studying how to be efficient in motion, and it eventually slows down to a virtual study of Tai Chi Chuan. Whether the student engages in actual Tai Chi, or just slows his movements down so he can best analyze and correct them, is beside the point. What is important is that the student is looking with awareness, not just doing mindlessly.

Awareness you see is an a funny item. Anybody can become aware through the simple process of looking. Thus, this thing called awareness is free, and it is the point to all life.

Without awareness there would be no life. Or, one could say that life is according to the degree of awareness that the looker develops. Thus, the value of the martial arts, as they proceed slower and slower and thus create more and more opportunity for looking, is incalculable.

That all said, I do not recommend stopping your studies of speed until you, personally, have reached a point which is satisfactory and obvious to you. Live, go fast luxuriously, for you should give full throttle to all stages of learning the how to of combat, even and not matter if you are studying a rare martial art. One should not give up youth to old age.

Al Case has studied martial arts 4O years, and he is not slowing down. Come on over to Monster Martial Arts and find his free ebook. Or, better yet, head over to Five Army Tai Chi Chuan and see him put out a candle from over a foot away.