Regardless of the reason of the padding it greatly reduces the transmission of kinetic energy through the skull. A conventional boxing punch is designed to accelerate the brain. It is a different form of damage.
You are not going to be able to punch a brick in half with boxing gloves on.
Best I could find on short notice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiMzBwTNOEE.
The skull will transfer small amounts of energy from side to side up to a point. It’s only 1/4 inch of bone. The impact of a knuckle is a focal point on that 1/4 inch of bone and will compress the skull enough to transmit the energy into the soft tissue. Unlike a gloved hand, a bare knuckle punch is a very focused event. I’ve personally seen people knocked out with a single jab to the head (no body weight). A knuckle to the temple or side of the head is very effective.
Jabs are thrown with body weight, unless you’re doing it wrong. It’s a subtle movement that you might miss unless you’ve learned how to box, but it’s there. Read Dempsey’s book on boxing (available free online) if you want to learn how a jab is thrown and how to get your body weight into it.
Unfortunately, the knuckles are supported by the metacarpals, which are very small and weak bones. Punching with a bare fist is like swinging a hammer which has a glass handle. I would be happy to bet that the metacarpals would break before the skull did. The reason people can break bricks with their hands is because the bricks are set so they can be easily broken–if the brick didn’t break, the bones of the hand would.
I can buy “reduce,” though in the real world the ability to hit harder without breaking your hand more than makes up for the reduction in kinetic energy. “Greatly reduce” is probably wrong-boxing gloves aren’t as soft as you seem to think they are. Also note that you didn’t initially say “reduce,” you said eliminate.
So, let’s make sure we understand each other. Please rate the following in likelihood of ability to cause a knockout:
- Single hand punch with no body weight behind it
- Your double hand punch
- Boxing-style single-hand punch with all your body weight behind it.
Excellent book, by the way - Bruce Lee based a lot of his ideas on the Jeet Kune Do straight lead on it.
MMA (actually called No Holds Barred or NHB back in those days) was fought for a brief time in the United States and for many many years in Brazil (called vale tudo) without gloves.
I started watching it back then. In the first event I saw, three people broke their hands.
Okay, you CAN but any weight you put into the follow-through will be too late. I’ve seen people break suspended boards with blows that look like they’re flicking water off their hands, and I don’t understand where the power comes from. A bilateral strike seems both awkward and weak to me but I wouldn’t bet my life that someone somewhere hasn’t used it effectively - probably one of the one-inch punch people.
Substitute 'acceleration" for “deflection” and see if that works for you. Alternatively, try bursting a balloon by punching it in the air, and then hold it against a wall and try again. He’s simply saying that you can get a greater impact force when you hit something that can’t move away under the impact, and he’s right. That said, I’ve already argued that a head is heavy enough and a neck restrictive enough that we should see the “shockwave effect” with hard one-hand punches, if it exists.
How many people threw the deadly double shockwave punch?
Instead of thinking of a punch, try thinking of a thrown baseball, like someone suggested upthread. Suppose you want to break a suspended board with a baseball. If you hold your body rigid (glue your shoulder and back to a wall) and then throw the baseball at it, it probably won’t break. Now try ungluing yourself, getting a windup, putting your shoulders and hips into the throw, and step into the throw. This time the baseball will probably shatter the board. Same thing with punching. You have a shoulder twirl, a falling step, etc (described in Dempsey’s book I linked to earlier)–that’s how you get your weight into a punch. You modify the m in F=ma (and the a too, since you can add them up). The weight doesn’t come in the follow-through, it comes at the instant the punch lands. If you think getting your weight into a punch only affects the follow-through, then you’re doing it wrong.
A one-inch punch is a simple demonstration of getting your weight into a punch. The power comes from moving your mass in the direction of the punch, not from the arm movement. A boxer will do the same thing every time he throws an in-close punch; it just took a martial artist to turn it into something mystical.
But he went all the way. He used terms like “never” and “eliminate,” which is simply wrong. I would have been fine if he’d said there’d be a “lesser impact” if the head wasn’t fixed, but that’s simply not what he said.
At first all of them, but the chimp bodies started to pile-up so they outlawed it.
This is not right. He started this by saying a double punch was a more effective way to knock someone (or a chimp) out which is a different thing all together. He was wrong about that because he didn’t understand the DNA of a KO. Now he’s back pedaling and talking about physics and transference. Further his stance that the a double punch transfers twice the power of a single punch is true only if all things are equal. The problem is the the contortionist nature of a double punch to the head of an opponent standing in front of you doesn’t allow you to generate enough power in either hand to match the power of a one hand punch with your body weight behind it. Indeed, the combined power of each hand won’t even come close to the power generated from a single punch with body weight behind it. This doesn’t even take into account the kinetic energy built up from a single punch due to it’s longer arc which translates into greater speed. Think of hitting something with a hammer held in your hand versus swinging it around you head on a three foot rope then hitting something.
His “physics show that two punches are twice as powerful as one” is bullshit because he leaves out many aspects of the equation.
No, no link to Wiki on coup/contrecoup brain injuries!
CMC fnord!
Egads… why is that thin man banging his head on the wall repeatedly?
Not to mention having to get much closer for a ‘two handed punch’, and putting yourself in a bad position for defence or balance.
A lucky roundhouse haymaker might do the trick. Probably break your hand though.
Put on a motorcycle helmet. Then hit yourself as hard as you can on both sides at the same time. You won’t feel much. Hit yourself as hard as you can on one side, you will feel it.
Or an easier experiment. Sit in an armchair. Bump your hands at the same time on the outsides of each arm rest. Your body will not feel a jolt. Hit just one arm rest and you will feel the jolt.
You’re not accounting for Ninja Shockwaves™.
Mohamed Ali would throw a backhand punch and whip his wrist to accelerate it to great affect.
As I’ve said before, I’ve seen people tagged with a very innocuous looking jab to the head. I know it’s possible to knock someone out without the force generated by a professional boxer.
The skull is only 1/4 inch think piece of bone and it loses some of the dome structural integrity in the flattened sides. For discussion purposes I would expect a nominal strike speed of 10 mph. that energy would be focused on a 1/2 inch knuckle. I would expect that to be more than enough to compress the skull and transmit the kinetic energy into the brain.
What would help the argument either way is if I knew why the caps of water bottles are cored out on impact. Clearly the design of the bottle plays a major role in the event.