The
following scenario, or something similar may have occurred in your past.
You
are out for the night with some friends. One of your male friends, or maybe
yourself makes as comment. One of your female friends responds by playfully
slapping or punching the male.
Male:
“OWWW! That hurt!”
Female:
“Oh, don’t be such a wimp! I barely touched you”
Male
(muttering) “I DID hurt…”
What
has happened in this familiar scene is quite interesting. The lady did not
intend to do any real damage so she did not put much muscular effort into the
punch/slap. Probably she used no more muscular effort than was needed to raise
and move the arm. Because it was very relaxed the hand was moved very fast and
thus acquired lots of energy. Paradoxically, she hit harder because she did not
intend to hit hard.
A
punch or similar strike can be taken to have three phases. There is the cast or
throw, where the hand is moved towards the target. There is the impact. And
there is the withdrawal.
Momentum
is mass x velocity. Kinetic Energy is mass x velocity2. We cannot
make our arm and hand heavier so if we wish to increase a strike’s momentum and
energy we must move everything faster. Or looked at another way, we need to
minimise those factors that may slow the system down.
The
arm does not need muscular tension when a punch is being thrown. This would
slow the arm down. Likewise we want the withdrawal to be fast too so that our
arm is not grabbed or counterattacked in some other fashion.
The
only time we need the muscles tensed is just before and during the moment of
impact so that the energy goes into the target rather than being used to bounce
our strike off. In fact a good punch or blow has something of a snapping action
to it. It transmits a portion of its energy and then withdraws before some of
this energy can reflect back into the hand. This is what Chinese arts are often
talking about when they talk of fa-jing.
You are probably more familiar with this effect than you think. If you swing a
towel at someone it has very little effect. If, however, you make the towel end
snap as it makes contact the effect is quite different.
Getting
the correct timing of this relaxed:tense:relaxed cycle for a punch becomes
quite labour intensive for some martial arts students. There is also the added
complication of ensuring that the bones of the hand and arm are correctly
aligned on impact to avoid hand injury.
Things
become a lot simpler if you use a palm-heel strike instead of a closed fist.
You still need to relax your arm and add a snapping action but tensing and
aligning the hand seem to take care of themselves.
Let
us consider another familiar action. Clap your hands like there is a big, fat,
nasty, blood-sucking mosquito before you. That noise your hands make is energy
being converted into sound. There is a lot of energy because you don’t tense up
before you clap your hands. You just do it so the action is fast and relaxed
and consequently quite powerful. There are a number of combat applications for
hand-clap actions in my books
“What
is the sound of one hand clapping?” The answer is that of a palm-strike
hitting your enemy.
