Electricity and Physics

[Dana Sheets]

The other important bit is hitting someone when they are shifting their weight or flat footed.

When folks are shifitng their weight between legs away from you is when you get the really dramatic - them flying across the room kind of results.

When they're shifiting their weight or actually moving towards you - well now it's a party. What that little gif file shows is two vectors that start out going in opposite directions West vs East. Then when the punch impacts it reverses the vector of the head faster than the body can catch up. Then eventually the body drops nearly in place but still a little bit on the West's vector. (If North is the top of the screen).

Now where my brain gives out is when you've got two people moving in a slightly circluar way throwing linear and circular technique.

So the individuals have movement plus the summation of power through their joints and then they're hitting someone else who hase some kind of movement plus the summation of power in their joints...boy do I envy natural fighters.

And of couse - our classic knockout threw a close fisted punch to the chin...with wonderful results. OY!

[Van Canna]

Marcus,

Good post. A while back I posted something from Sensei Mark Brelsford who discussed the proper way to hit solid objects and makiwara, e.g., not striking ‘head on’ but with the body sideways to it so as to minimize the jarring to bone structure and joints. Of course with kicks, it is a bit different, but Marcus has the right method.

I watched the Enshin karate world’s heavyweight champion, at Gary’s dojo, roundhouse kick the solid support post in the dojo, with such power that the building seemed to shake.

[Van Canna]

Good punch. Now imagine the same punching in the street without gloves. Here is something from someone I am fond of quoting

I recently responded to an incident between two inmates.

One was brushing his teeth. The other came up behind him and struck him on the right side of his head. The tooth brusher tried to turn but was pressed into a corner, punched again and again with hard rights until he curled into a fetal ball. Blood splashed (not smeared) onto the wall at shoulder height.

The attacker broke several bones in his hand and did not know it. Not just the metacarpals of a boxer's fracture but one of his fingers was deformed.

[Bill Glasheen]

The first punch there is the only one worth talking about. For the rest of it, the fighter's head was braced and protected by the mat. (Note how it elastically bounces back up after being hit - a sign that the mat absorbed all the high frequency components of the shock).

What causes that KO actually isn't the twisting of the spine. The brain stem (medulla) is all about nonconscious functions such as respiration, heart rate, and blood pressure control.

The consciousness centers are higher up in the brain. The injury you get from that hit which causes the head to snap around is something called contrecoup.



Because of the space and spinal fluid between the brain and the skull, the brain is actually quite well protected from linear blows. But blows that cause a rapid spinning of the skull tend to cause a greater amount of contrecoup. Obviously there is no brain at the jaw, but the brain on the opposite side bounces off that skull. This is what causes the subsequent KO.

- Bill

[Van Canna]

Bill,

Correct. Excellent explanation.

[Dana Sheets]

http://www.kerwinbenson.com/punch_papers_book.html

Just found this.

Yes, There Are Martial Arts Secrets
Less than 5% of the martial artists know this principle. Warning -- this technique takes practice, but boy is it worthwhile. Other fighters won't believe how you are generating your power.

You DON'T need punch-through power to deliver a resounding blow.

And I have a little experiment to prove that this technique works!

hmmm......"You DON'T need punch-through power to deliver a resounding blow.
"...very interesting...

[Dana Sheets]

something I'll read some day...a 1977 paper on the mechanics of a karate punch.

https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/16404

[Bill Glasheen]

Actually it was a karate "strike."

This is just someone's bachelor of science thesis. The thesis advisor is Michael Feld. He subsequently published the work in Scientific American (Volume 240, Issue 4, Pages 150-158 (1979)) and in the American Journal of Physics (Vol. 51 (9) pp. 783-790, 1983).

It's not all that you might think it is, Dana. It's a strobelight photography study of people breaking things. MIT pioneered the measurement methodology, and applied it to many interesting things in nature.



- Bill