Are there Hacks to Gain Power?

Colin Wee practising solo drills at Matilda Bay Foreshore. Perth, Western Australia.

The black belt in front of me was younger, fitter, taller, and stronger. 

Irrespective, it was my martial arts demonstration. So when I hit him, he backpedalled about three metres before landing on his bum. 

It wasn't my intention to hurt him, so I chose the soft parts of my forearm for the final connection. If it was my intention to hurt him, I would have asked him to stand strongly, delivered the power onto a smaller area of impact, injected the power all at once, and truncated the kinetic energy inside his body. There's a really good article at Soo Shin Kwan that deals with these hard style mechanics (see States of 'Muhyeong' and 'Yuhyeong' in ITF Taekwon-Do).

I have a habit of taking care of (most) of my training partners, and I'm a decent enough bloke. Plus I know how to put on a show, so it transpired I decided to 'float' him, sending him hurtling backward. Jesse Enkamp talks about 'floating' in The 4 Principles of Quan-fa: Float, Sink, Swallow, Spit. 

The black belts in attendance hardly saw me pull my arm backwards, and witnessed one of their friends thrown back, as if by magic. It might as well have been a reprise of that One Inch Punch demonstration Bruce Lee did. The part of the story I like the most? I told them afterward - what I did was the ITF Sine Wave.

It was, and it wasn't.

I wasn't totally lying. Though I don't practice the ITF Sine Wave, the compression and expansion I see that is so obvious through pattern practice makes for a natural movement, and creates the opportunity to practice some decent fundamentals. When I make to release energy, I use the same compression and expansion principles, and in my mind is justification enough for The Sine Wave. 

The waveform I use however is significantly shorter. The striking arm doesn't pull back, but as the kinetic energy started from the ground up, it still 'travelled' enough distance before making contact. Of course everyone was so busy looking at the arm being held one inch from the opponent, they forgot to see the pulse that started from the legs up. 

The 'fun and games' also is in pushing of the energy through his body in a slightly upward direction. However the opponent prepared himself, he would not have read the trajectory of my movement. In physical terms, he was lifted and pushed. Visually, he backpedalled like a cartoon character because he felt like he was falling in mid-air. It was so sneaky.

On my end, I was not going for what Soo Shim Kwan describes as the "contraction at the final moment of the technique." The motion for me is a vertical cycle. This circular wave gains me the most throw of physical force without pre-emption, and allows me to cycle the energy back into the body. The smoothness that returns back to the same position I started has the added benefit of making it look like I didn't move at all. LOL.

For those of you who want the most 'bang for the buck' lethal application for this? I guess it would be holding an extremity of his still whilst sending his body backward like that. This would be a disastrous outcome for him, and for your insurance coverage. 

Too many make a fuss on what is hard style and what is soft style, yet there is overlap. For a person like me to plug and play soft style concepts into a hard style system hints there is much all of us can do to assess our fundamentals and their expression during conflict.