The Secret of Knocking People Out in the Martial Arts!
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 relaxed before, and to be totally empty after. This is the idea of focus, and if you understand it you can knock an opponent all the way out. Hard to do it the way they put fists in gloves before a fight, but there it is.
Think about it like this, a radar station is searching for incoming targets, it is looking, and what would happen if the radar screen suddenly filled up with static? The radar operator wouldn’t be able to see, he wouldn’t be able to find the incoming targets for the static. So when you make yourself empty, and make your fist empty, 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 a UFC or strikeforce MMA fighter, or even a spectator, think about the physics I have described here, and try to put them into your strikes. This 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 put the mugger, or the ring opponent, down for the ten count snooze!
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
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