I’m sure we’ve all seen the footage of the karate masters getting kicked/punched full force by multiple attackers (if you haven’t, I’ve lost the link, sorry). One of the clips involved a dude getting punched in the neck by four guys at once (the first one, we’ll call him North, punching the guy in the Adam’s apple and the other guys standing at the other compass points). The guy getting punched appeared to be fine and, after a quick swallow, shook the hands of his attackers. From what I could see the punches were, if not full-speed, strong.
I got an email the other day from the instructor of a self-defence system (you know, those newfangled ones that are based on “scientific principles” and may or may not work. This one in particular appears to be a valid and decent one) answering some of his client’s questions about taking a punch. His response was that the guy getting punched by four dudes at once had nothing to worry about because he a) was prepared and b) the punches cancelled each other out.
A, I’m OK with (as that was the point of the drill), but B?
I’m at a loss to think of how it’s possible that this worked. Can anyone explain, or is the author full of it?
I can understand half of (b), that being that if you get hit from all directions simultaneously your head isn’t going to move anyhwere, but that’s not the only reason that getting punched in the throat is dangerous obviously.
However I know from experience that some parts of your neck can take an amazing amount of pressure without any problem whereas other spots (such as your adam’s apple) are quite sensitive to the least push. I suppose if the target got nailed by people avoiding the really dangerous points he might come out of it OK.
These aren’t “karate” guys in the video, they’re juko kai guys I think (if you’re talking about the “Ultimate 10 martial arts” program from TLC). Sorry I can’t talk about the physics part, but rest assured those demonstrations are basically parlour tricks. I know there’s some trick to the neck punching, but I’ve never bothered to find out what it is since nobody in their right mind would ever try it in a real situation.
The kick to the balls one is easy though - they tense up their legs and hold them in such a way that the kick gets wedged and jammed into the upper inner thighs and stops a few inches short of the family jewels. I can do that one - but it too must be specifically set up to work; you simply never stand that way when someone’s attacking you.
FWIW you might be amazed at how much pressure parts of the neck will take. I can press right at the little hollow on top of my breastbone (under the Adam’s apple) and dig my finger pretty far in without any problem. The last couple times I’ve seen the Peking Acrobats they’ve had strongmen do the same thing with spears and rebar - put the point on their throat and press hard enough to buckle the item (admittedly long and slender so it’ll bend easily but still impressive).
Only guys I’ve known who could take repeated kicks to the groin without special positioning were one fellow who lost both testicles to cancer (so a kick to the crotch wasn’t much worse than a kick in the butt to him) and the other was Emmanuel Yarbrough in UFC 2; at 700+ pounds his thighs were so damn big it was like he was wearing sandbags. Keith Hackney kicked him in the groin hard and didn’t hit anything but fat.
I missed that kick; what I remember was Keith’s opening bitchslap that set Manny on his ass. Another good example of a guy being able to take hard (real) shots to the nads was when Keith Hackney fought Joe Son in UFC 4. Joe took 4 or 5 hard punches right in the pills sans cup and finally loosened up on a headlock he had Keith in. If you saw the punches you’d think Joe should have immediatley rolled over and started puking after punch #1. Didn’t happen though. So a guy taking one kick to the inner thighs really isn’t impressive at all.
Sadley most MA demos that anybody is impressed by are more or less parlour tricks; they have to be. You can’t bust you’re partner’s nose or break his arm for show, and few people appreciate any kind of grappling demos, so what’s left? Breaking inanimate objects up, flashy looking choreographed routines, greatly exagerated toughman stunts, and outright BS “no touch” KOs in Chi blasts.
I’ve only seen 2 or 3 real fighters who could take a good head shot from someone truely trying to hurt them. These guys did go down and get dazed, but managed to keep going. ALL of them had really thick skulls and were just naturally tough; they didn’t train for it and in fact couldn’t help it.
Yeah, it was pretty impressive. Hackney isn’t small by any means but Yarbrough is just so damn huge that thhat first hit made me think of a tiny lumberjack knocking a large tree down with one swing of his axe. “Two hits; me hitting you and you hitting the floor”.
I saw the Son/Hackney fight as well…every hit had my friends and I cringing.
R.e. breaking I’ve seen a few demonstrations that were pretty impressive - not the usual bricks and blocks of ice, there was one fellow who broke a Louisville Slugger (in the middle, not at the thin part of the grip) with two kicks. The first kick was the impressive one since the bat cracked but didn’t snap and he kicked it with his shin…ouch.
The guy that originally introduced me to Seibukan showed me one trick for taking a blow to the neck. He called it a “parlor” trick verbatim. Basically if you’ve got the neck muscles for it, you can tense your neck in a way that there is a strong muscular front on your adam’s apple.
Now of course he took strong chopping blows to the adam’s apple to demonstrate, not fists.
But still, chop yourself in the adams apple right now and you’ll imagine a full force blow being pretty impressive.