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, without the tension of your muscles holding you back, you can better see the path of an incoming fist, the angry emotion, the guiding 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 slow down your motion and your fist, and that fist will fly fast and true, and your radar will better help it find the target. The moment of fistal collision and your hand gets tight, and that increases the weight of it, making it hard enough to knock somebody into dreamland.
So there are two things a fighter, whether in the UFC ring or out on the mean streets, must do if he is going to have knock out power. The first, of course, is to be loosey goosey empty, not immobile because of his own muscular tension. This frees the inner radar to find targets, and enables the MMA fighter to move faster because he is not considering himself as weighty and heavy.
The second thing is to make the fist tight when it hits, and loosen it immediately afterwards. This is real nanosecond stuff here, but it really works. The energy comes to bear, the power focuses, and that which was empty and quick suddenly becomes full and heavy.
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 Kung Fu for 4O+ 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
