The Secret of Knock Out Power in the Martial Arts!
Mixed Martial Arts gladiators circling the octagon, searching for the chance, and, BAM, somebody is punched out. The roaring crowd, the price of the ticket, the cost of good brewski, it is all worth it if you can see a good knock out. What most people don’t realize is that a good knock out, given a little thought and hard work, is actually easy.
Forty years ago, in Kang Duk Won Karate my instructor told me that A tight fist is a heavy fist. Man, what good advice. Just make the fingers into steel bands, tie it together with a thumb, and, zingo bingo, you have yourself a brick busting fist.
The trick, of course, is to be totally empty before, and to be totally empty after. This is the idea of focus, and it is vital to knocking an opponent all the way out. Hard to do it the way they wrap hands before a fight, but there it is.
imagine it like this, a radar station is scanning the open skies for incoming targets, it is scanning, and what would happen if the radar screen suddenly filled up with static? The radar operator wouldn’t be able to find the incoming targets for all the static. So when you make yourself loose and empty, and make your fist totally relaxed, you are trying to get rid of the static, make it so you can see what is going on around you.
Then, your perceptions picking up the flight of fist, the anger, the very intention of the attacker, your fist will move faster because it is empty, and it will hit harder when it becomes tight. Muscular tension will not slow down your fist, and it will fly fast and, your radar not being blind, will better hit the target. The moment of impact your fist tightens, and that increases the mass and weight of the fist, making it hard enough to knock somebody out.
So there are two things a fighter, whether in the UFC or on the street, must do if he is going to get knock out power. The first, of course, is to be empty, loosey goosey, not tied in place by his own muscular tension. This frees the inner radar to pick up the attack, and enables the MMA fighter to move faster because he is not thinking of his body as weighty and heavy.
The second thing is to make the fist tight upon impact, and loosen it immediately afterwards. This is real millisecond stuff here, but it does the trick like nobodys business. The energy concentrates, the power focuses in the moment, and that which was empty and quick suddenly becomes abel to knock out anybody.
If you are an MMA fighter in the UFC or strikeforce, or even a spectator, think about the physics I have described here, and figure out how to use them in your strikes. Empty/full is actually a classical concept from traditional Karate, and it is used extensively in the ancient Shaolin types of kung fu like Hung Gar or Choy Lee Fut. Emptiness and focus, these are the keys that will lay anybody out for the ten count!
Al Case has analyzed Karate for 40 years. He has written hundreds of articles for the magazines, and had his own column in Inside Karate. You can pick up a free ebook at Monster Martial Arts, or get the straight skinny on hitting harder at Punch ‘Em Out
categories: MMA,UF,knock out,knock down,octagon,mixed martial arts,Chuck Liddell,Tito Ortiz,Forrest griffin,shaolin,karate,kung fu,gung fu,fitness
Tags: Chuck Liddell, fitness, Forrest griffin, Gung fu, karate, knock down, knock out, kung fu, mixed martial arts, MMA, octagon, Self Defense, shaolin, Tito Ortiz, UFPosted in
