What Does and Doesn’t Cause Injury

This real world video shows further examples of strikes that cause injury… as well as punches and kicks that are ineffective.
Well – it looks as though it has been removed – which goes to show that reality self defence in the face of violence is a different world from safe ‘dojo’ activities…

This was CCTV footage from a Siberian supermarket… yes, Siberia. That part of the world has quite a “different” view on “excessive force”.

One of the best ways to learn what works in the world of violence… and what doesn’t… is not by watching training videos of some “reality system” or martial art/combat sport. It’s to objectively watch footage of raw violence — like the CCTV video above — and see exactly what does (and doesn’t) cause injury.

Then go back to your “reality system” or martial art/combat sport training videos and ask yourself if what you are viewing will work in the real world.

Sadly, most often you’ll find… it won’t.

Although this boxer took on 4 guys in the street and managed quite well…

Martial Arts Myths 1 of 12

The Hits and Myths of Martial Arts – Myth 1

by
Chris Hepler and Jennifer Brandes
A Role Playing Games Perspective

Myth 1: Taking a martial art is the same as knowing how to fight.

Whenever you listen to anyone talk about fighting, consider the source.

A martial art is a body of folklore, a tradition orally transmitted down several “generations” by master and student, modified by the personal preferences and needs of those involved. Depending on the learning environment, fighting and self-defense may be the class’s focus, or could be passed over in favor of exercise, tournament fighting, or cultural and spiritual lessons. Every martial arts instructor has a different idea of what the art is used for, and what aspects or techniques are useful and useless when violence actually hits.

Some people look at this subjectivity and get discouraged, rejecting martial arts entirely and saying that they don’t work in combat situations. This is like saying being taught a foreign language in high school is useless. It depends on the teacher and the student. Many people will never have to use it; most people can’t get it right unless they are immersed; throwing too much knowledge out at once is as bad as too little; and those who don’t make learning it a priority will only remember fragments under times of stress. The ones the knowledge works for are the ones who can make the skill seem “natural” whenever they need it.

Making use of martial arts means you must ultimately recognize what is meant for fighting and what was an “extra” designed to get the practitioner in physical and mental shape. Quite often, tradition has an unspoken reason behind it…and just as often, it is vestigial due to specific, no-longer-applicable circumstances.

For example jujitsu was created for samurai to fight other armored samurai who were well-protected against punches and kicks. However, throws, joint locks, and other grappling maneuvers still worked fine, and were in fact critical against assailants with swords. Now, while punches and kicks are obviously not always ineffective, these circumstances created an entire school of fighting which heavily favors grappling. The famous Brazilian variant of jujitsu, the Gracie system, teaches to swat the opponent’s face as a distraction technique rather than advocating punching to the face at all — reasoning that punching at high speeds in stressful situations could hurt their hand, and throwing and choking moves are more reliable.

Over-relying on a martial art’s favored moves is especially dangerous when the martial art has turned into a sport. Judo and Greco-Roman wrestling are former fighting styles from which the deadliest techniques were removed to make for matches that didn’t break murder laws. They can be reverse-engineered to become effective fighting styles with a little effort and some understanding of their principles, but learning them is not the same as training specifically to fight.

Other Myths…

1. Taking a martial art is the same as knowing how to fight.
2. Self-defense is the same thing as fighting.
3. My martial art can make you unbeatable.
4. There’s no difference between “fighting” or “kicking butt” and killing or maiming people.
5. Fights last ten minutes or more, at which time the hero can make an impressive comeback.
6. A fight only concerns the combatants.
7. Martial artists don’t need or use weapons.
8. Fighting with two weapons is difficult or confusing.
9. Weapons are heavy.
10. You can mash someone’s nose bones into their brain and kill them with a single mighty palm strike.
11. All martial arts look like Tae Kwon Do.
12. A style is a style.

The Award Winning Multiplied Force Fighting System (MFFS) 5 DVD Set.

Martial Arts Myths 2 of 12

The Hits and Myths of Martial Arts – Myth 2

by
Chris Hepler and Jennifer Brandes
A Role Playing Games Perspective

Myth 2: Self-defense is the same thing as fighting.

Self-defense, the goal of most martial artists, is about keeping yourself alive. This is not merely knowing how to break someone’s arm or even being able to run very fast -it is recognizing all the factors that can threaten your life and negating them. This is everything from locking your doors at night to blocking a punch. The key to successfully defending yourself is being aware of a potential threat and responding.

The GURPS, Rolemaster, Legend of the Five Rings, and Shadowrun systems basically have it right — barring super powers, all the fighting skills in the world don’t help if you get blind-sided by someone with a brick. A large aspect of self-defense is, therefore, noticing the guy lurking at the train station before he gives your character an impromptu lobotomy. Once you know he’s there, you can run, get to a public place, and so on, avoiding fighting at all. Even if you choose to fight, it is a major advantage to control when and where “the fight starts,” that is, when both combatants are acting at once. If the fight starts after the attacker knocks the victim down, pins her, and draws a knife, and only then does the victim start struggling, it’s vastly different than two people agreeing to “put up their dukes.”

In roleplaying games, the prelude to a fight is often ignored. Players figure that GMs will ask for a Perception test if there’s an ambush planned, and if not, that it was unavoidable. Then the combat starts, and everyone concentrates on trading blows. To make combat more interesting and more vivid, take a holistic approach to self defense -look for potential conflicts before they start and find creative ways out of it once punches start flying. Combat should be exciting for both GMs and players, an opportunity for both roleplaying and team building.

It can make for more realistic games if character awareness coincides with player awareness. And this calculating of the odds shouldn’t drop once you start rolling dice. It’s pretty easy to “beat the crap out of someone” if you have a mind to. The difficult thing is beating the crap out of someone while they’re trying to do the same to you and walking away afterwards.

So use everything you’ve got, especially your friends. One advantage RPGs have over real life is that you’re rarely going to be attacked alone. If the whole party pays attention to each others’ actions, you can use teamwork to increase everyone’s chances.

Don’t wait to be told about the light glinting off the assassin’s rifle on the roof above you — if you think someone wants to kill you, tell the GM that you’re watching the rooftops, and the alleys, and the guy from the bar who left right after you. Ask how many potential opponents there are…before the GM tells you to roll initiative. Keep an eye out for any six-packs of young men in leather and while you’re at it, don’t deal drugs or have sex with their girlfriends on their turf. Ask yourself if you can beat the opponents before you get in the fight, rather than trying it for a few rounds and then realizing you were supposed to scatter. And have a back-up plan ready — just because your first punch doesn’t work doesn’t mean you can’t splash beer in their eyes and run while they’re blinded.

This is where you can pull out a trump card on a well-designed martial artist character: a sky-high athletics or running skill. If you’re a bad fighter, you can get out of range (and find cover in case they have guns or bows). And if you’re a good fighter, it means no villain’s henchman is getting away from you without a good horse or a car.

Other Myths…

1. Taking a martial art is the same as knowing how to fight.
2. Self-defense is the same thing as fighting.
3. My martial art can make you unbeatable.
4. There’s no difference between “fighting” or “kicking butt” and killing or maiming people.
5. Fights last ten minutes or more, at which time the hero can make an impressive comeback.
6. A fight only concerns the combatants.
7. Martial artists don’t need or use weapons.
8. Fighting with two weapons is difficult or confusing.
9. Weapons are heavy.
10. You can mash someone’s nose bones into their brain and kill them with a single mighty palm strike.
11. All martial arts look like Tae Kwon Do.
12. A style is a style.

The Award Winning Multiplied Force Fighting System (MFFS) 5 DVD Set.

Empty Hand Striking – is it a Science?

An Observation on the Physics of Karate Strikes.

by JON CHANANIE. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22903

1 Introduction

In recent years, the ancient eastern art of Karate-Do (a Japanese word, literally
translated as “the way of the empty hand”) has become popular in the western world.
Karateka—practitioners of Karate—often break boards, cinderblocks, and other solid
materials in order to demonstrate the strength that their training develops. Much can
be said of the history and culture associated with the expansion of martial training, but
this essay—it is, after all, a physics paper—will examine the collision mechanics of a
hand strike to a solid target like a board.

2 Force, Momentum, and Deformation Energy

That large objects moving at high speeds hit harder than smaller objects moving
more slowly goes without saying. In attempting to break a board, a karateka seeks to
hit the board as hard as possible. It therefore follows that the karateka should move
his or her weapon (for the purpose of this paper, the hand) as quickly as possible in
order to hit as hard as possible. But what makes for a “hard” strike? Two ways exist to
answer this question, both equally accurate. The first looks at the collision in terms of
force and momentum; the second looks at the collision in terms of energy.
Force (F) is acceleration (a) times mass (m): F = m· a. Momentum (p) is mass
times velocity (v): p = m· v. Since acceleration measures change in velocity over time
(t) (put another way, acceleration is the derivative of velocity with respect to time),
force is the derivative of momentum with respect to time. Equivalently, force times
time equals change in momentum, or impulse (/\p): (/\p)=F· t. This is significant
because momentum is a conserved quantity. It can be neither created nor destroyed,
but is passed from one object (the hand) to another (the board). The reason for this
conservation is Newton’s third law of motion, which states that if an object exerts a
force on another object for a given time, the second object exerts a force equal in
magnitude but opposite in direction (force being a vector quantity) on the first object
for the same amount of time so the second object gains exactly the amount of
momentum the first object loses. Momentum is thus transferred. With/\p a fixed
quantity, F and t are necessarily inversely proportional. One can deliver a given
amount of momentum by transferring a large force for a short time or by transferring
small amounts of force continuously for a longer time.

Why, then, move should the karateka swing his or her hand with as much velocity
as possible? Because if the hand is moving quickly, it is likely to decelerate (strictly
speaking, accelerate in the direction opposite to its direction of travel) more quickly in
response to the force the board exerts on it upon collision, as per Newton’s third law.
If the amount of time involved in the transfer of momentum is therefore small, the
amount of force that will be transferred to the target all at once will be large. This
sudden transfer of a lot of force causes the part of the board that is struck and which
therefore experiences that force to accelerate. If that part of the board accelerates
enough relative to other parts of the board (which are generally held still by the
cinderblocks on which the boards are placed), breakage occurs.

This same phenomenon can be analyzed in terms of energy transfer and resulting
deformation damage. Given and object with mass m1 at rest (the board) and another
object of mass m2 (the karateka’s hand) moving at velocity v upon impact and
ignoring the negligible amount of energy lost as thermal energy (heat), the amount of
energy in the system lost to deformation damage (/\E) is given by the following:

where e is the coefficient of restitution, which measures how elastic the collision is. It
is a function of the hardness or softness of the colliding objects, which along with
velocity determines impulse. If hard objects collide (for a perfectly inelastic collision,
e=0), they will accelerate one another quickly, transferring a large amount of force in
a small amount of time while soft objects colliding (for a perfectly elastic collision,
e=1) transfer smaller amounts of energy to one another for longer periods of time.
Difference in how long momentum takes to transfer and therefore in force at a given
instant is why hitting a pillow with the fleshy part of the hand hurts much less than
hitting a brick with the knuckles.

As /\E is proportional to the square of velocity, the more velocity the hand has, the
more energy will be transferred into the board. In the simplest possible terms, if the
board is infused with more energy than its structure can handle, it breaks. More
rigorously analyzed, energy transfer causes the board to dent. This process of
transferring energy is work (W). Work is force times distance (d): W=F· d. If the area
of the board that is struck dents a sufficient distance, it will break. Since the distance
it dents depends on the energy transferred to it and the amount of energy transferred
depends on the velocity of the karateka’s hand, a high-speed strike is most likely to
break the board.

3 Striking Surface

Any martial artist who has ever struck a board with improper hand technique can
attest to the physical pain associated with such impact. The human had is a complex
system of bones connected by tissue, and much can be said about the importance of
proper hand alignment in breaking. From the standpoint of physical science, however,
what is crucial about hand position upon impact is that all formulae for force,
momentum, and deformation energy are for a given unit of area. By minimizing the
amount of striking surface on the hand involved in collision with the board, a karateka
minimizes the area of the target to which force and energy are transferred and
therefore maximizes the amount of force and energy transferred per unit area.

Consider a martial artist capable of striking with 190 joules (J) of energy. A typical
human hand is about 6 inches long including the fingers and 4 inches across, which
means that a strike with the entire hand disperses those 190 J over 24 square inches,
about 7.92 J per square inch. If, however, the karateka strikes with only the fleshy part
of the palm, about 2 inches across and 1.5 inches long, the 190 J will be dispersed
over only 3 square inches. That strike will deliver about 63.3 J per square inch,
inflicting many times the amount of damage the whole hand could—the same amount
of energy dispersed over a smaller area delivers more energy per unit area. This is
why martial artists seek to use as tiny a striking surface as possible in not only hand
techniques, but also kicks, elbows, and other strikes as well.

4 Point of Focus

Karate black belts often advise white belts before their first attempt at breaking
not to try to break the board, but to break the floor under the board. This is to ensure
that the hand does not decelerate prior to contact with the target, a mistake that
beginners, fearful of injury and therefore mentally hesitant, often make. High velocity
of the hand is critical to successful breaking, and data taken from high-speed movies
of karateka show that maximum hand velocity is achieved when the arm reaches
approximately 75% of extension. Intuitively, this makes sense. Since the hand cannot
move forward a distance greater than the length of the arm, it must have a velocity of
0 at full arm’s length extension. It follows that the hand must decelerate well before
the arm is fully extended. Advising beginners to attempt to hit an imaginary target
25% of their arms’ length on the far side of their targets would therefore be more
precise than the typical encouragement to aim for the floor, but the physical principle
is the same: maximum hand velocity is achieved when the point of focus of the strike
is well beyond the surface of the target.

5 Use of Body Mass

Note that mass is a co-efficient in the formulae for force, momentum, and energy
transfer alike: all three are directly proportional to mass. Since a human being’s mass
for the time it takes to deliver a strike is constant—a karateka with a body mass of 70
kilograms before a strike will have a body mass of 70 kilograms after the strike—
mass is often and erroneously dismissed as a constant in the equations for force,
momentum, and impulse. What matters is not the karateka’s body mass, but how
much of that mass is involved in the strike. A body mass of 70 kilograms is beyond
the karateka’s immediate control; how many of those 70 kilograms contribute to the
strike is very much within the karateka’s control. It is therefore crucial not to use the
arm alone to extend the weapon and hope for sufficient force and energy to break the
target. The entire body should be used by snapping the hips and pushing with the legs
in the direction of the target. This explains why boxers are seldom knocked
unconscious by jabs, where little more than the mass of the arm contributes to the
punch, but are frequently knocked out by hook punches where the entire mass of the
body is thrown behind the punch. The same principle of using the entire body mass to
deliver a blow applies in breaking techniques as well.

6 Specifics of Impact

Consider now the breaking process from the perspective of the target. When the
force of the strike is applied to the board or cinderblock, it accelerates in response to
that force. The key is that it does not accelerate uniformly—those areas where the
force is applied (the center of the target, if the strike is properly aimed) accelerate
much more than the outer regions of the target which are held in place by large
cinderblocks. This localized strain, the response to influence of stress imposed by the
strike, initiates the rupture. Strain is functionally the loss of height of the target that
occurs when the top surface is compressed and the bottom surface stretched. Because
of their molecular compositions, materials such as wood and cinderblocks withstand
compression better than stretching. This is why the target begins to split at the bottom.
A clean break occurs when the crack reaches the upper surface of the target.

Works Consulted:

1. Bardosi, Z., “Kintematical Movement Evaluation of the Straight-line Karate
Techniques.” Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium of the Society of
Biomechanicsin Sports, July 3–9, 1990, Prague, Czechoslovakia, 23-30 (1990).
2. Bloomfield, Louis A., How Things Work: the Physics of Everyday Life. New
York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (1977).
3. Walker, Jearl D., “Karate Strikes.” American Journal of Physics 43, 845-849
(1975).
4. Wilk, S.R. et al., “The Physics of Karate.” American Journal of Physics 51, 783-
790 (1983).