Wait for the master.

The amount of confidence oozing from this dude

i re-watched it several times, looking for what he does differently. finally i spotted it. look at the line of motion in his strike. it’s not especially fast, he doesn’t wind up more than the others, and it’s not a matter of strength – the guy who knocked over the stand probably put more muscle into it. but there’s a unity of movement he has that the others lack. his body and sword are all one curve. everything moves at once along the same line.

from a physics perspective, that means all the force he’s applying is concentrated at the point of contact between his sword’s edge and the target, and it moves at just the speed that breakage propogates through the material. too slow and it wouldn’t have enough force; too fast and he’d get ahead of the break, shoving the target over instead of cutting it.

from a writing perspective, that means that i should focus on describing a master swordsman’s smoothness more than their strength or speed, and can also have witnesses be confused at the effectiveness of strikes that don’t actually seem all that fast.

Martial arts are all about physics, my karate sensei is has a mechanic/physics diploma and he loves to explain the biomechanics of human body and how this was turned into fight via martial arts. It’s a very good way to teach. The sword master has a larger stance of the feet, much more than the others, allowing his barycenter to lower and thus giving more stability. This, united with the movement of the sword that follows the angle of his body increases the power of the blow without actually using too much muscle strength. Pretty sure he’s also just tending (not contracting) the muscles under the armpits, near the rib cage, the serratus anterior. That makes a huge difference.

Above: The science of moving like a master of martial arts.

What was most interesting to me is size has no correlation to success for any of the people.