Straight Punches vs Round Blows - Some Clarification
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- Опубліковано 6 жов 2024
- The previous video I recorded on straight vs round strikes in historical sources generated some discussion and debate around an apparent contradiction.
This video looks to adrress and resolve that.
The book I mention is available here: www.pugilism.or...
Great thoughts on a complicated matter! I was never a professional fighter, but I did martial arts from the time I was 6 and ended up doing some amateur kickboxing and boxing until I was 30. At 41 now, I'm also an MRI technician who went through x-ray school, so I learned a lot about the anatomy of interest regarding this question. I had a boxer's fracture in my right hand in my 20's but didn't learn what it was until school. It wasn't set correctly because I waited 2 weeks to go to the doctor, so yeah, you're right about that. Lol. Still, from personal experience, I always felt a good straight punch carried more power than a hook. While a wide sweeping hook has time to build a bit more velocity, when it does come to the point of contact, the body is not in a posture to brace as well and therefore transfer all that power into the target. That is to say, Newtons 3rd law in mind, when your fist meets the target, because your arm is bent, it is not providing as rigid a foundation and so will give more than a straight and extended arm behind a straight blow. To my mind, I think the greatest merit of round blows is not that they generate more power (because, as I said, that is countered by the less rigid foundation), but that they come from the periphery and often catch the opponent unawares. Just my two cents.
hand slap will save the metacarpal with a haymaker style hand strike, at the cost of enlarging the impact area.
If you watch slowmotion replays of ufc fights, you can usually pickout all the would-be Broken hands. Could be a fun drinking game.
This is confusing as all ####.The Wing Chun guys say to hit with the bottom knuckles, Shotokan people say hit with the top two, then some trainers say hit with the middle knuckle. Next time I go go to Flannigans unless necessary I'm just going to offer a confrontational person a Stella Artois and forget about percussion Force transference conflict fighting altogether.
That's probably always a good move. :D
What about using s vertical fist like some boxers use and is used in some Asian martial art systems? I use the vertical fist and have had little problems hitting even hard objects like walls and not having the same effect as with a horizontal fist
I was wondering the same. Has nobody an answer?
What if instead of making a fist you do a palm strike?
Sir, I agree with your answer to Gil gamesh at least in my experience after all the training you just lapse into "muscle memory". You seem to have a great deal of understanding about hand injuries, could you answer a question (I have my own theory)? My hands were taped (wrapped as you say) and in padded gloves, a great number of the punches thrown were "round" ones. I made sure to make a tight fist as I threw the punch,, why did my metacarpals break closer to the wrist? My theory has something to do with "somethings got to give". Thank-you, Dante.
+100dfrost I wouldn't know for certain, but I'd tend to agree with your thoughts. The metacarpals taper from the knuckles as they go towards the hands, and so the bottom end of the bone will be less securely held than the top end. It on;y takes a little give for a bone to be able to fracture so I'd guess that was simply the weakest point. Or the point with the least support as the position of the tumb effectively prevents a wrap from being wound around the lower end of the bones perpendicularly to the hand as it can be done at the end of the bones.
+EnglishMartialArts Sir, sounds like what I thought, only without the good terms. Thank-you very much, Dante.
+100dfrost I would like to add that in regards to basic mechanics the shearing force has a bigger leverage as you get closer to the wrist. With increasing leverage the torque increases which naturally leads to the damage occuring closer to the wrist.
+MultiFreak107 Multifreak, thank-you also, that makes sense (even to me}.Dante.
I was wondering how hard it was to keep your composure through a fight, and keep it "straigth". But maybe it's only something you can know by experiencing it.
+Gil gamesh It's an interesting question. Pretty hard I'd say, but there's an awful lot of evidence to show that when stressed we revert to ingrained motor pathways. Or more simply put we do what we have trained to do when we aren't able to think about it.
I remember reading an anecdote from a cop in the US about the time he first got into a firefight. He was crouching behind a car, and once it had all finished and calmed down he noticed that all his empty shell cases were lined up in a neat row, because that's what he did at the range to make sure he could keep count. He didn't mean to do it, and had no recollection of doing it, but because it was what he did time after time after time whe using his gun, it was what he did when using his gun when full of adrenaline.
So I'd say the more you train them, the more likely you are to do them when it really matters.
+EnglishMartialArts I remember a similar (or perhaps the same) incident report. In fact, I have encountered several reports, mostly from the late forties through the mid-sixties, (after which it seems to have been identified as a problem, and trained out of the law enforcement establishment) wherein officers either realized after a gunfight that they had dropped their empty shell casings into their pockets, or were found dead after gunfights with their empty casings pocketed.
This is because in that era, many police departments reloaded spent casings for training ammo, (a process which is very safe and economical if properly conducted) or if an officer was a handloader himself, in which case he would also most likely be a frequent recreational shooter and thus would want the brass, he might save the cases to reload for his own use. This was a time when the revolver was still king in American law enforcement, and on a swing-out cylinder, hand-ejecting revolver, it's quite easy, if you know how to train the motion, to depress the ejector rod, and catch the casings with the same hand as they fall from the chambers.
The problem is that it's slow; not untenably, ponderously slow, mind you, but it adds at least a couple of seconds to a revolver reload, even for a shooter who is very good at it. In a gunfight, a couple of seconds can be a long, long time -- most especially when your weapon is empty. That's why, after this tendency was identified, revolver training was modified to include reloading procedures that stipulated allowing the empty cartridge cases to fall free while the other hand was reaching for a speed loader, moon clip, or loose rounds from a dump pouch, where that method was still used.
I believe there are accounts of mma fighters that get hit hard during a fight and for the rest of the fight fight on on auto-pilot. Then when the fight was over they couldn't remember it.
how about hummer punches? Are those safer?
Zoidberg say yes 🦀
Hey man , love the videos . Should have watched and learned. Screwed up my hand in a fight throwing a looping punch . It still can’t bend backwards pAst 40 degrees . Got an x Ray and there were two fractures which are both healed now. Should I get an mri??? Considering you’re a hand surgeon I thought you’d be able
To help
Hey, interesting video. I'm from a eastern an moxed martial arts background (but not ufc style mma) and i was wondering a bit about where you were saying you got fractures from round blows. my understanding is you were saying it occurs in the metacarples of the little finger. However in my training it was always taught that sven in round blows you only strike with the largest 2 knuckles, and that the knuckle of your little finger shouldn't be making contact. Would this prevent those injuries? And is what your saying that it's failings of technique in these round blows that cause these fractures?
So Oz, what are your feelings on palm strikes? Safer or less safe than a closed-fist knuckle strike? Slower? Faster? I realize they're probably not a major part of classical pugilism, but I'm curious about them -- including why they don't come up in some unarmed martial arts, but do in others.
+Britt Gardner I think they are safer for the person doing them, but also for the person on the receiving end. I guess (and I stress that this is a guess) that they aren't found that often because of this and that the basic idea is to practice enough to be able to do the more damaging closed fgist strikes safely.
That being said they can certainly do some serious damage if done well, and form a self defence perspective they are a good idea.
Thanks for the reply.
I can see your point; if you're trying to inflict enough damage to win a fight by points or knockout, it makes more sense to go with a closed-fist strike, and if you know how to use them without hurting yourself, why use anything less?
I don't think that palm strikes cause less damage. I broke many bricks when I was younger this way, and I could never do that with fists. I would rather say that palm strikes allow for more power, but they also can cause more serious injuries to your own hand, if it all goes wrong, by hyperextending fingers and palm.
Anyway, you definitely sacrifice range. The risk of eye-poking goes way higher too. Self defense systems try to teach how to do those, but it's almost impossible to train them safely at speed, and once trained it's hard to remember to not use them when sparring.
Overall I'd say that palm strikes are both safer and more effective when used by people with flexible hands (young women, for example), and more dangerous and less advantageous for strong men with thick wrists. Pugilism was not taught to girls, I think.
Anyway, round punches with the base of a palm tend to come really naturally to anyone I have seen.
Others made valid points, but also to be considered is that one loses maybe 3-4 inches of range by dorsiflexing the hand...3-4 inches that are often critical. In a ground-and-pound situation, this might not be a huge consideration...which is why we sometimes saw it in the early days of the UFC, but it's not something I'd ever consider in a standing exchange. On the contrary, Bruce Lee notably suggested striking with an open hand...at the eyes or hyoid cartilage...because an open or "knife-hand" granted one a few more inches of range. This is obviously not a consideration in pugilism, but in a fight for survival...is a valid concept.
Not too much clockwork in the old brains eh? Just kidding, I've broken most my fingers but never my skull, brain damage on the other hand? Wait? Hand?
+evil5150 would you rather have dodgey hands after multiple breaks but working mental capacity or vice versa