Sorry, I should've been much clearer, that was really badly worded as I was distracted also doing my day job :) As a sibling comment pointed out, I wasn't using any specific terminology as I was trying to talk at a layman level. There's not really a difference. I should've said 'hard enough and fast enough'.
Conceptually, there's two main methods of fusion - inertial confinement, and magnetic confinement.
In inertial confinement, lasers are shot at the plasma to squeeze it together so the pressure (and thus temperature) increases until fusion occurs. This is also what happens in stars, except they use gravity not lasers. Conceptually, this is what I alluded to when pushing it 'harder'
In magnetic confinement, the pressure/temperature is increased by shooting electrical currents through the plasma among other techniques that i'm not as familiar with. The volume hasn't really decreased, but the kinetic energy and pressure of the plasma has increased so it's the same principle, but this is conceptually what I alluded to when i said pushing it 'faster'.
In either sense, the idea is to somehow increase the plasma temperature which increases the kinetic energy of the particles enough that they overcome the electrostatic barrier. It was just really badly worded by me and I apologise for that!
