The right-click mouse gestures in Maya 3d are one example of solving this problem nicely. If you do it at normal speed, you see & select items on the context menus and submenus. But as you learn the gestures that form from making these selections you can execute them rapidly and the context menus don't need to be displayed. It's a perfect example of training you to use an advanced feature with an easy learning curve, then letting the 'training wheels' come off on a case by case basis, no change in settings needed!

Does anyone happen to know of any other applications that use this kind of UI, or even better, a windows utility that adds this kind of functionality across the OS, building custom context-menus for each application?