Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast #ICMYI: Martial Arts – Fight Like a Physicist About this episode Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly get schooled on the martial arts by two fighting physicists: Jason Thalken, who has a Black Belt in Hopkido, and Prof. John Eric Goff, who has a Black Belt in Karate.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:11 Gary O'Reilly? I'm Gary O'Reilly
0:12 Chuck Nice? And I'm Chuck Nice
0:13 Gary O'Reilly? And this is Playing with Science Today, we delve into the amazing world of martial arts and guaranteed by the end of this show, you'll possess the skills of a ninja! Okay, we may have to retract that last statement.
0:27 Chuck Nice? You think?
0:28 Gary O'Reilly? Ha ha! A judo, a chop chop chop. Okay, put it this way: you may possess the skills of a ninja, you may not. How's that? Better?
0:36 Chuck Nice? Yeah, that's better. That's a lot better. You know what I mean? That was a great disclaimer, okay? I'm going with you're gonna be a ninja, a kick-ass ninja, and teaching us to fight like a physicist will be Jason Falcon, author of... Oh, fuck! Shit, let me do it again.
0:51 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
0:52 Chuck Nice? And teaching us to fight like a physicist is Jason Falcon, author of, you guessed it, Fight Like a Physicist!
0:59 Gary O'Reilly? Oh, yeah.
1:00 Chuck Nice? Yeah! And also on the show is our good friend from Lynchburg College, Virginia, Professor Eric Goff, author of Gold Metal Physics, and whose new book is coming out in 2018, and it's called The Science Behind Krav Maga: The Israeli Military Fighting Technique.
1:19 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah, so once again, two perfect guests for Playing with Science!
1:23 Chuck Nice? That's right.
1:24 Gary O'Reilly? Okay.
1:25 Chuck Nice? I love this, I love this show, man.
1:26 Gary O'Reilly? See, martial arts, for me, you go much further than Kung-Fu. Everybody knows karate.
1:33 Chuck Nice? Right.
1:33 Gary O'Reilly? Or they know of karate, and then there's judo, jiu-jitsu, and taekwondo, and all these different things that come together. And you're thinking, the mad kids in the class, they're going there because they want to beat people up. And then there's these other guys who are going there, "I'm fed up being beaten up, I'm gonna go and learn martial arts."
1:50 Chuck Nice? Exactly.
1:51 Gary O'Reilly? So it's, and then the pop culture explodes, and you look no further than Bruce Lee.
1:58 Chuck Nice? The man himself entering the dragon. Oh, man, fists of fury.
2:04 Gary O'Reilly? And however long they were made ago, you still watch them and go, wow.
2:10 Chuck Nice? As a matter of fact, the cool thing is, uh, I found this video online.
2:15 Gary O'Reilly? You want to tell us publicly about this?
2:16 Chuck Nice? Yeah, and I gotta tell you, it's this great video of, um, they're talking about whether or not Bruce Lee would be a great MMA fighter. And we should take a listen to it. Just take a listen to this. It's a guy just narrating. And as he's narrating, you need to just kind of, um, kind of imagine Bruce Lee very, very, very quickly with his hands doing movements like these incredible movements that you can barely see. That's how fast his hands are going. Take a listen.
2:50 Speaker 02 Bruce Lee's style of Jeet Kune Do is known as the way of the intercepting fist. And if we reference a line from his Tao of Jeet Kune Do, quote, "The counterattack calls for the greatest skill, the most perfect planning and the most delicate execution of all fighting techniques. It is the greatest art in fighting, the art of the champion." Understanding this makes better sense of what he's doing. Throughout the sparring, he essentially feels his opponent's rhythm. And when he feels or sees breaks in his opponent's rhythm with his lead leg or lead hand, he counters his opponent amidst their attack. He leaves with his right hand and right leg, taking the stance from fencing philosophy. It almost looks like Bruce is holding an eep or fencing sword in the way he holds his
3:32 Speaker 02 right hand out. If you also notice, Bruce's stance is very balanced, not all the weight on his lead nor all the weight on the back leg, allowing him to move in and out very efficiently. His training was different, the same way a boxer's training is different from a mixed martial artist. And so when you see him doing two finger pushups, he's not doing that just for show. He's doing it because it allows him to more efficiently rip your throat from your neck, eliminate your eyes, exploit vulnerable areas of your body. And if he misses and say hits your skull, minimizes injury. But considering the speed, precision, and his Tao of striking as you come in, he probably will not miss. So that leads to another question. What if Bruce did compete in MMA?
4:15 Chuck Nice? The cool thing is, like, you know, this Jeet Kune Do is, you know, his style. He kind of like perfected and, um, you know, uh, he, he, he, he kind of augmented this style to create his own kind of martial arts, so.
4:31 Gary O'Reilly? But it's never, it gets, it gives me the feeling martial arts is ever evolving. And we'll probably get into this with the good professor, Eric Goff.
4:38 Chuck Nice? Yes.
4:39 Gary O'Reilly? Um, but I mean, Bruce Lee was a student of Ip Man. And if you've ever seen the movie Ip Man, and there's an Ip Man 2 and everything else, it's, uh, you know, go check it out.
4:47 Chuck Nice? So Ip Man was a real man? Oh my gosh.
4:51 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah, so, um, there was the, there was the movie with Jason Lee, Bruce Lee's son.
4:57 Chuck Nice? Yes.
4:58 Gary O'Reilly? Um, and I think I remember one scene, there is a black and white photograph in a frame on a desk with Ip Man and Bruce Lee. And it was just kind of like a homage to the past and where Bruce had come from himself, so.
5:10 Chuck Nice? And, and, and his lineage goes down even further because then Bruce trained somebody who trained somebody who's now Conor McGregor's trainer, you know? And so it's funny, but they all kind of change things to their own needs and liking.
5:26 Gary O'Reilly? And then one of Bruce Lee's students was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
5:30 Chuck Nice? Absolutely.
5:31 Gary O'Reilly? I mean, how.
5:31 Chuck Nice? Who we had on the show and he talked about that.
5:33 Gary O'Reilly? How amazing that Bruce Lee, this, this fat-free little guy with unbelievable speed, has a seven foot two basketball star and is still the all-time point scorer, record holder in the NBA. So it really is just a, a, an interesting sport. So let's welcome our first guest, Jason Thalken. Thanks for joining us, Jason. How are you? I'm doing good, yourself? We are fabulous. Thank you for asking. So for those of you who are not familiar with Jason Thalken, he has a PhD in physics, has studied and competed in eight martial arts. I won't mention how long just because it might offend him and I don't want to offend a guy who's got that much talent in his hands, but he does have a black belt in Hap Kido.
6:16 Chuck Nice? Hap Kido?
6:17 Gary O'Reilly? Yes, and he also has a book to his name. He is the author of Fight Like a Physicist.
6:23 Chuck Nice? Of course.
6:24 Gary O'Reilly? And the incredible science behind martial arts. Jason, welcome to Playing with Science. Have I left anything out?
6:32 Speaker 03 Thank you for having me.
6:32 Gary O'Reilly? You're welcome.
6:33 Chuck Nice? So I gotta know, man, I'm, I'm, I'm really ignorant here. This is the first time in my life I have ever heard of hapkido. What is hapkido?
6:49 Speaker 03 So hapkido is a Korean martial art, which, uh, um, it, it, it's a, it came from a, the Japanese jujitsu.
6:59 Gary O'Reilly? Okay, alright.
7:00 Speaker 03 So, so, you know, Korea's got taekwondo, which, which largely stemmed from, uh, Japanese karate and hapkido, which largely stemmed from, from jujitsu.
7:12 Gary O'Reilly? Let's address the obvious point here. Do physicists have an advantage when it comes to martial arts because of their scientific background and the way that they approach things and the understanding of physics?
7:27 Speaker 03 I would say absolutely, but, but, you know, the, the difference is, you know, you might think that the advantage happens like in real time in the fight, but, but really the advantage comes to what you think about when you train, you know, how you train, stuff like that. And that's sort of the mindset I try to get at in the book is, you know, try to approach your training, um, like, like you're a scientist.
7:53 Chuck Nice? So when you're approaching your training like a scientist, um, is it a matter of, uh, knowing the principles of physics behind what you're doing? Is it a matter of breaking down your regimen in such a way where, uh, you're using or you're looking at it like it's a scientific discipline? Uh, is it applying the laws of physics themselves in individual cases? Uh, what, how exactly are you approaching the fighting or the training as a scientist?
8:27 Speaker 03 So some of it, some of it is stuff like understanding a law of physics here and there. Um, so that if, if you understand, uh, something like your center of gravity, it'll help you out so much when it comes to takedowns. And then that's a simple explanation. So your, your center of gravity is about, yeah, let's say like an inch and a half, two inches below your belly button.
8:47 Gary O'Reilly? Okay.
8:48 Speaker 03 And you can think of that as sort of your center point. That's where you would balance, no matter what orientation you're in. So if someone pushes you above your center of gravity, you'll lean back. If they push you below your center of gravity, you'll flop forward.
9:07 Gary O'Reilly? Gotcha.
9:08 Speaker 03 And so any takedown, whether it's a sweep, or a takedown, or a tackle, or even just a push or a throw, it all comes down to moving that center of gravity away from the supports that you have, which is usually it's your two feet if we're talking about fighting from a standing position.
9:30 Gary O'Reilly? Okay.
9:31 Speaker 03 So the only things you need to consider are what's going on with that center of gravity? And where are the supports? And why can they not get back under that center of gravity before it hits the ground? That basic understanding of that principle will get you through your training a lot easier. So now, instead of having to memorize, "Oh, I have to do this specific sweep in this specific way", you understand why that technique is the way it is. You know, you understand, because in a fight, in a tournament, in a competition, nothing turns out the way you planned it to. You know, nothing's as perfect as you practiced it.
10:12 Gary O'Reilly? Right.
10:13 Speaker 03 But if you understand why the technique is the way it is, then you'll know what to do when it's not perfect.
10:21 Gary O'Reilly? All right, we'll talk about takedowns and center of gravity's and axis and all the rest of it. But let's sort of move on to another subject. Punches.
10:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, so punches are actually really interesting things. First thing that a lot of people look at when they look at a punch is like, "Oh, you know, like how much force was behind your punch?" And it's not even that. There's something really weird about punches. Because if you look at the total force of a punch, it's not that big. So if you wanted to look at the total force of a push, like if I just pushed you... Way more than a punch.
11:05 Chuck Nice? So are you, are you saying it's better to get a push in than a punch in?
11:10 Speaker 03 Well, it all comes down to what are you trying to do? What are you trying to accomplish with this punch? So there, there's, there's really two sort of extremes you can put into a punch. And one is try and put as much of your body weight as possible behind it. Try to um use as much of your muscles as you can, once contact has been made, to get as much push and that's, that will knock your opponent back. It can force the wind out of your opponent. Um, if you've actually hit uh the head uh far away from the center of rotation, you can get the head rotating and maybe get a uh KO.
11:53 Speaker 03 Um, but that's one thing you can do with a punch. But another is you can try and cause pain. You can try and cause, you know, localized tissue damage, something like that. And in that case, um, really what you need to do instead of trying to just get a lot of push out of your punch is try and get a whole lot of uh, let's say snap into it.
12:14 Gary O'Reilly? Is there a different technique to punching? Cause the, when you talk about punching, you immediately think of boxing, classic boxing, right? In the ring.
12:23 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:24 Gary O'Reilly? As opposed to the way in any of your eight martial arts, you are taught differently in terms of punching as a technique?
12:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, so there's actually lots of different ways to punch. And uh so some, some take a little more um uh of one of those sides. So traditional boxing punches uh tend to go a little more along the throw your weight into it side.
12:50 Gary O'Reilly? Mm-hmm.
12:50 Speaker 03 Uh, and, and the reason for that is, is we actually have boxing gloves. And that does two things. It slows down the arm speed by um, I, I tested it myself and on myself, it slowed down my arm speed about thirty percent.
13:05 Gary O'Reilly? Wow.
13:05 Speaker 03 Um, so that's, you know, if you're just throwing punches with your own hand, um, that's how much slower it goes.
13:15 Speaker 03 But the the other piece of that is boxing gloves actually absorb the energy of impact, which is local to the area that you're hitting. So if you hit someone with boxing gloves,
13:27 Chuck Nice? Yep.
13:29 Speaker 03 it will do less localized structural damage. So you're not going to cause as much bruising, you're not going to break as many bones.
13:38 Chuck Nice? Right, yeah. I mean, it's there, it's there to kind of protect you from being beat to death, you know, the gloves, right?
13:45 Speaker 03 Well, well, no, it's there to protect the hands from broken bones and the face from superficial injuries. But the types of injuries that would actually kill you, it does not protect against.
13:58 Chuck Nice? Oh, okay. Okay. Good to know. Good to know. That's, by the way, Jason, that's why I don't box.
14:06 Gary O'Reilly? What happens, Jason?
14:07 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:08 Gary O'Reilly? If if I punch from, say, a central position in my chest and punch forward using my elbow as it is as a hinge.
14:15 Chuck Nice? Like, yeah, a traditional jab.
14:18 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah. Or do, when I rotate, and I've just hit the mic, that's the sound engineer hates me now. If I rotate as I punch, what sort of difference, what am I increasing or decreasing force while I while I throw that punch and rotate?
14:35 Speaker 03 Yeah. So so there's actually, it's really interesting. If you look at all the debates over different techniques and stuff, the the style of punching where you're sort of punching from your shoulder and rotating your whole body into the punch is something that is relatively modern, and and I believe is is associated more with with boxing gloves than anything else. So we've got boxing gloves that can protect the hands. All of a sudden, you can put way more force behind punches than you could before without, you know, destroying your own fists. So now we start putting our whole body weight behind it as we punch. But if you go back, like, I think if you read.
15:19 Speaker 03 Jack Dempsey's book.
15:21 Chuck Nice? Alright.
15:22 Speaker 03 The, the name is, of the book escapes me, I'm sorry, but um, he, he actually trained, um, you know, or, or learned before a lot of that came to be developed and he, he actually recommends a quick, straight left punch with a vertical fist that's, uh, you know, much more like what you were just describing.
15:45 Chuck Nice? Yeah, nobody fights like that anymore. That's like, you know, that's like old timey boxing.
15:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:51 Chuck Nice? Yeah, but in order to fight like that, you have to have a handlebar mustache. That's
15:54 Gary O'Reilly? But it obviously has an effective reason for, for being used.
16:02 Speaker 03 But what, what I'm saying is I think the gear has a, a lot of sway into how that style changed over time. There's, there's other styles, um, that, that had the same sorts of punches before. So, um, traditional Kung Fu, Wing Chun, both have that from the center, uh, vertical fist, uh, punch.
16:24 Gary O'Reilly? Yes.
16:25 Speaker 03 Um, but, you know, other styles, um, and it's, it's tough because, you know, Western boxing did have a, a strong influence.
16:35 Chuck Nice? Listen, we gotta take a break, right Gary?
16:36 Gary O'Reilly? We do, and Chuck's thinking about who he wants to knock out first. He's gonna draw up a list during the break.
16:43 Chuck Nice? I am putting that list together right now. Gonna do a whole lot of flicking and rotating and yeah, well, at least thinking about it. I'm not, who am I kidding? I'm not hitting anybody.
16:53 Gary O'Reilly? No, he's not. Right, we're gonna take that break. Jason Thalken, fabulous to have him on and don't forget, author of Fight Like a Physicist. Yes, please go check that book out. It is splendid, covers an awful lot of subject matter. We are going to take a break and when we come back, our good friend, Professor Eric Goff from Lynchburg College in Virginia will be our next expert on martial arts. Stick around, we'll be back shortly.
17:23 Gary O'Reilly? Welcome back, I'm Gary O'Reilly.
17:25 Chuck Nice? And I'm Chuck Nice.
17:26 Gary O'Reilly? And this, of course, is still Playing with Science. Yesterday, we are talking martial arts and the physics therein. And joining us now is our very good friend, Professor Eric Goff, Professor of Physics at Lynchburg College, Virginia, author of Gold Medal Physics, The Science of Sports, and not just a man with a plan, but a man with a book coming out next year, that'll be 2018, The Science Behind Krav Maga, which, if I'm not mistaken, Professor, is the hand-to-hand martial arts of the Israeli military, is it not?
18:01 Speaker 04 That's right. The Israeli Defence Forces employ this, and it's becoming a much more popular sport here in the US. You're seeing a lot of billboards going up for Krav Maga instruction these days.
18:12 Chuck Nice? Well, what is it? I mean, it sounds like, I gotta tell you, when you talk about the martial arts, you got some cool names out there, okay? You got your judo.
18:24 Speaker 04 Your aikido.
18:25 Chuck Nice? Your aikido, okay? That sounds cool. Your jujitsu, which sounds very dangerous. Even karate, which is like, oh, I know what I'm getting into. But then you say Krav Maga, and it sounds like...
18:40 Gary O'Reilly? You're gonna think, you're thinking it's food again, aren't you?
18:42 Chuck Nice? Yeah, I'm like, Krav Maga, mm, delicious. Ah, you know what? I had the best Krav Maga the other night, I gotta tell you. It was unbelievable. I'm telling you, the outside was crispy, the inside was tender, it was the best Krav Maga I've ever had.
18:59 Gary O'Reilly? My stomach's already rumbling, behave yourself.
19:01 Chuck Nice? All right, so what is Krav Maga?
19:02 Gary O'Reilly? Firstly, Professor, welcome back to Playing with Science. And please put this man in his place, thank you.
19:09 Speaker 04 Well, if Chuck had had good Krav Maga the other night, his face would look a lot different.
19:15 Gary O'Reilly? Alright.
19:16 Chuck Nice? Alright, Professor.
19:17 Gary O'Reilly? Schools in.
19:18 Chuck Nice? Way to go. Nicely done, my friend.
19:21 Gary O'Reilly? So, is it, is it kicks, flicks, all the sort of flashy stuff? Or is this more hand-to-hand, let's sort of like end up wrestling? Or is it a combination of a lot of different martial arts? Is it eye gouging and, and like rip your throat out stuff?
19:36 Speaker 04 Uh, it's, it's got some of that in there. Um, I'm, I've studied karate myself. I'm a first degree black belt and I, I really enjoy karate. It's, but it, it has a lot of elegant katas and movements. But Krav Maga is a much more, uh, realistic fighting system. So, uh, I, I think I'd, I'd be more comfortable knowing a little bit more Krav Maga than karate if I were on a, a dark sidewalk somewhere and had to, to fight somebody.
20:01 Gary O'Reilly? I'm guess, I'm guessing that the good professor never has an issue with pupils.
20:06 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
20:07 Gary O'Reilly? At least on a lecture.
20:08 Chuck Nice? I gotta tell you, I'm sure there's a great deal of discipline in the professor's class. So, so Krav Maga is, uh, basically a, a street fighting style then, huh?
20:17 Speaker 04 Or, or. It is. I mean, you, you've got some Aikido in there. You've got some boxing, wrestling, uh, some karate. I mean, you've got an amalgam of, of all kinds of different systems. And it, it's an ever-evolving system. It, it employs whatever works well and it changes techniques as, uh, new ways to perform them come along.
20:37 Gary O'Reilly? If we looked at it from a point of view of physics, what would be the best way to do exactly what Chuck's just said? Neutralize the opponent in super quick time?
20:47 Speaker 04 So typically somebody might be swinging a punch, uh, they could have a knife. Uh, we practice gun to the head. We practice all kinds of different scenarios. And the idea is to get out of a danger zone very quickly. So get the gun away from your head, get the knife away from you. Uh, and sometimes all it takes is a simple deflection or a parry. And you move in close. You, this is close quarters fighting. So you want to get into the opponent's space. Um, administer defensive tactics very quickly, uh, combatants very quickly. And then hopefully be able to evacuate the danger zone without continuing the, the attack.
21:28 Chuck Nice? So from a physics standpoint, what is the most powerful?
21:34 Chuck Nice? Human action that you can take against an opponent. Uh, uh, from a physics standpoint, where can you apply the most force to create a striking blow that will render your opponent, um, uh, neutralized?
21:51 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah, good question.
21:51 Speaker 04 Well, sometimes the best thing you can do is just get out of the way. Uh, I mean, if somebody's charging you and you're coming at you with a, you know, a knife or something, if you could just barely parry, uh, the object or the person, um, sometimes the goal is to just disrupt their balance. So you want to just get the person offset a little bit from balance and then you go in very quickly. If you're in close, uh, take advantage of what creates the, uh, most amount of torque and swinging something very quickly. So an elbow might be a much easier thing to swing in close than trying to swing like a hammer fist or some other object where you've got more mass farther away from you.
22:34 Speaker 04 So the idea is when they're in close, try to do things very quickly, short range techniques, um, and then get out of the way.
22:42 Chuck Nice? That's, that's very much like Aikido. So, you know, using your knees and your elbows and your shins in, in close as bludgeoning objects to.
22:52 Speaker 04 Yeah, so we also use, and we do some Aikido techniques with sticks as well. Uh, disarming with sticks, uh, offensive approaches with sticks, anything that's laying around that can be used as a weapon is a, is an option.
23:05 Gary O'Reilly? Go back to the point where you said, uh, if someone was charging you with a knife, a stick or whatever it was. So if I get this right, you are going to use their asset, which is their speed towards you as a weakness. So this is art of war. The strength of an opponent is their weakness.
23:20 Speaker 04 Yes.
23:21 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah, so exactly. Uh, that's what I've, in my mind, I'm seeing you wait and wait, having practiced this strategy and then just move to one side and then use maybe an elbow or whatever it might be to tilt that axis of your opponent and take them off balance.
23:39 Speaker 04 That's right. If they're coming at you in a straight line, you know, we're taught a circle's gonna beat a straight line and a straight line's gonna beat a circle. So if we can rotate out of the way on a linear attack, then the person's momentum is moving in a direction away from us. And all we have to do is a very quick, you know, punch from the side or a kick or something that can disrupt that person's balance. Go in very quickly for another set of combatives and then get out of the way.
24:07 Gary O'Reilly? Is there a particular angle at which a person will lose their balance? Or is that down to the shape and the actual center of mass and center of gravity of each individual?
24:17 Speaker 04 We just need to get the center of mass over a pivot point. So the idea, I mean, very simple demo you can do is just stand against a wall with your back against a wall, lift your leg out, and you're inevitably gonna fall forward. You cannot lift your leg up and stay upright against that wall because your center of mass is moving forward over your foot. So the idea is if somebody is, you know, attacking you, if you can get their body manipulated in a certain way where you get the center of mass over a foot, the chances of them falling are gonna go up precipitously.
24:53 Gary O'Reilly? I wonder how many people listening to this are actually now making a move towards the wall.
24:58 Chuck Nice? To see if they can actually lift their leg up without falling forward.
25:01 Speaker 04 Well, good luck.
25:02 Chuck Nice? And is it permissible in Krav Maga or any other sport, not sport, but martial arts, when you do put your opponent off balance, is it okay to say "ole" and allow them to go by?
25:19 Speaker 04 I'm sure, but you better be very good at what you're doing because they're gonna come back.
25:23 Gary O'Reilly? Oh, yeah. Your backside's gonna take a size 10 to it for sure. If we move away from Krav Maga, you've worked on an article for the Ring Magazine on boxing?
25:37 Speaker 04 Yeah, we've looked at different punch techniques. We've looked at punch speeds. If you do just kind of a standard jab-cross combination, we also do this in Krav Maga, you can get speeds close to 20 miles an hour with these jabs and crosses.
25:54 Chuck Nice? Wow.
25:55 Speaker 04 And one thing to keep in mind when you're punching someone, if I can just, if you extend your arm out straight, when your arm reaches its full straight extension, your fist is moving at zero miles an hour. If it wasn't, it would keep moving and your arm would stretch. So the maximum speed of your punch is going to be about halfway into that extended arm.
26:20 Chuck Nice? Gotcha. So is it better to be closer and hit somebody halfway through a punch than to hit them at the end of a punch?
26:29 Speaker 04 Absolutely. Your elbow's going to be bent about 90 degrees or so when your fist is moving at its maximum speed. And then as the fist extends, your fist has, or the arm extends, the fist has to slow down to zero when you get to a fully extended arm. So you have this rising speed and then, you know, going back down when the arm is extended. So the most damage on the punch is going to be when the elbow's bent.
26:54 Gary O'Reilly? So when I look at the biomechanics of my shoulder, my elbow, my fist, if we're going to call it that, my shoulder's not built for kind of rotating around the outside. It's more upwards, in a vertical upwards and downwards, and my elbow is a hinge. So how do we utilize the way we're constructed to the most effect if we are to throw punches?
27:19 Speaker 04 Well, the most effective way is to not just use your arm and shoulder. You really want to engage your core, this kinetic linking that we talk about where you're starting from the feet, you're going to start rotating your body into the punch. So your entire torso's creating a rotation. So you've got a lot of stored energy that you're going to convert to kinetic energy as through that rotation.
27:41 Chuck Nice? So you really want to be rotating your trunk so that, so that you are using, it's almost like a golf swing, huh?
27:49 Speaker 04 Yes.
27:50 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah, the same with a throwing action, a golf swing.
27:52 Chuck Nice? Right.
27:53 Gary O'Reilly? We're getting the same with the rotation for a kick in martial arts. The same thing applies. You're maximizing the energy. Is that right, Professor, by incorporating rotation?
28:04 Speaker 04 That's right. And when you have a, like, for example, a sidekick, you know, we also use sidekicks, frontkicks, backkicks in Krav Maga as well as karate. The idea is you're gonna cock your leg for a kick. So you're gonna store a bunch of energy like a spring in your leg when you've got your leg cocked and then you release that energy as you're kicking. And you're gonna rotate your hips at the same time. So you're trying to get as much energy released during the kick or the punch as you can.
28:34 Gary O'Reilly? When I've spoken to boxers and to people who practice martial arts, they said, "Some guys punch harder than others." And it's not the big, muscly guys that you'd think would have the hardest punches. Quite often, it's the little guys with not a lot of bulk, but they punch so hard. Is that down to rotation or is it something else that they're employing?
28:56 Speaker 04 A lot of it's rotation. I mean, keep in mind, your kinetic energy grows like the square of your speed and only the first power of your mass. So if you can get a lot of extra speed going in that punch, somebody's gonna feel that a little bit more than kind of a lumbering, bigger mass fist coming at you.
29:16 Chuck Nice? Wow. So really, it's more about the speed and the rotation than it is about, "Oh, I'm a big, strong guy."
29:25 Speaker 04 Sure. I mean, you really wanna get hit with that speed. I mean, when these punches are coming at you at 15 to 20 miles an hour when you're getting hit, you're gonna feel it.
29:35 Gary O'Reilly? I have a friend, he's got an older guy, there's nothing of him. And he just turns around to me and says, "This guy can punch so hard, it's ridiculous."
29:45 Chuck Nice? Wow.
29:46 Gary O'Reilly? And you're looking at him thinking, "He couldn't punch his way out of a wet paper bag." Yeah. When the martial arts expert says, "This guy can punch," you're thinking, "Okay."
29:55 Chuck Nice? Right.
29:56 Gary O'Reilly? Okay, thank you to Professor Eric Goff. We are going to take a break. We'll have more on martial arts when we get back, so stick around, it'll be Kick-Ass.
30:08 Gary O'Reilly? Welcome back, I'm Gary O'Reilly.
30:09 Chuck Nice? And I'm Chuck Nice.
30:10 Gary O'Reilly? And this, of course, how you already know, but I'll tell you anyways. Playing with science today. It's all about martial arts. Yes. Right, and joining us, our very good friend, Professor Eric Goff from Lynchburg College in Virginia, the author of Gold Medal Physics, and a man with a book about to come out sometime in 2018. Called The Science Behind Krav Maga.
30:39 Chuck Nice? Krav Maga.
30:41 Gary O'Reilly? Krav Maga. Is there anything that you've brought forward in that book that you would care to share with us right now?
30:48 Speaker 04 Sure. So, at the end of the year, I'm gonna be submitting Warrior Krav Maga Science to my publisher, and hopefully next year, we'll see this out on the shelves. And I've taken a lot of pictures. I train at Forest Superkicks here in Virginia, in Forest, Virginia. My instructor, Clifton Abercrombie, has been very helpful to help me with a lot of filming.
31:13 Chuck Nice? Wait a minute, Professor, did you say that your dojo is named Superkicks?
31:17 Speaker 04 It is, because we also do karate there as well.
31:20 Chuck Nice? Okay. Now, listen, I'm saying this because I'm about a thousand miles away from you. That's the dumbest name for a dojo I ever heard in my life, Superkicks?
31:32 Speaker 04 But you're not gonna forget it, are you?
31:34 Chuck Nice? Okay, you're right about that, because it sounds like it should be in a mall, cutting hair, or something. I'm joking.
31:40 Gary O'Reilly? You've so set yourself up for trouble.
31:43 Chuck Nice? No, listen, Professor, let me just say this, those are jokes, and I am sorry. Now that I know you're a first-degree back Black Belt.
31:51 Speaker 04 No, no, I don't mind the humor, but I don't mind advertising his facility, because my instructor, Mr. Abercrombie, is incredible. And what he's done with me with this book is to help me film a lot of the techniques that are gonna appear in the book to be described using physics.
32:10 Gary O'Reilly? Professor, your instructor, when you started to discuss things with him about martial arts, about Krav Maga, did you get the feeling this guy had the physics aspect of it covered already, or he'd just learned because he was into martial arts?
32:26 Speaker 04 Well, the way I describe it in the book is, I think people like that who've been training for years in these systems have an intuitive physics.
32:34 Chuck Nice? Yes.
32:34 Speaker 04 And I don't even care if the vocabulary's not there, or the mathematics isn't there. There's an intuitive understanding that's developed over many years of training for certain techniques that work. So he may not be able to give me all the nice physics for why something's working, but as he starts explaining a technique to me, I start putting the physics together in my head based on what he's telling me. So what I'm trying to do is put into the book what an instructor would tell you for something working, and then put the physics language with it, so that somebody who's got kind of a science interest will at least be able to read it and say, "Oh, I see why that's working."
33:15 Chuck Nice? That's great. So what you're really doing is translating the language of fighting, or martial arts, into physics.
33:22 Speaker 04 That's right. And, you know, physics is the basis for all the sciences, so, I mean, it's in everything we do, and it's certainly in Krav Maga.
33:32 Gary O'Reilly? So it's mechanical physics, and do we now realise that physics professors make better martial artists?
33:39 Speaker 04 Not necessarily. I mean, we have a lot of things we have to do besides training, so we don't have that time in the gym that's gonna help us make, uh, have our bodies be weapons of mass destruction.
33:52 Chuck Nice? Cool. Well, I still wouldn't want to mess with you.
33:56 Gary O'Reilly? No.
33:57 Chuck Nice? You know, by the way. I want you on my side, is what I'm saying. So next time we go drinking, I'm picking a fight, and then I'm calling on you.
34:04 Speaker 04 Okay, well, I'm not a huge fan of fighting personally, but I hope to learn something.
34:10 Gary O'Reilly? I think the best thing to do, Professor, is avoid the drinking with Chuck, to begin with.
34:15 Chuck Nice? Once again, words of wisdom.
34:18 Gary O'Reilly? Okay, Eric, sort of pop culture. Give me the mixed martial arts. Out of all, is there a hierarchy to which one is the best, which one is the most effective?
34:33 Speaker 04 I don't know that I would rank them that way.
34:35 Chuck Nice? No, okay.
34:36 Speaker 04 I think each one has its own benefits.
34:39 Speaker 04 Each one emphasizes certain skills over others. Krav Maga is, it's an amalgam of many systems. So it borrows from boxing and wrestling and Aikido, Judo, Karate. It, it, it doesn't mind stealing from other systems to have a great amalgam of whatever works.
34:57 Chuck Nice? So when, when you look at fighting, just in general, who is superior in terms of fighter? Is it the style? Like, you know, some people say Muhammad Ali, greatest fighter of all time. But of course, he's the greatest boxer of all time. What, who, who in your mind is the greatest fighter of all time?
35:18 Speaker 04 Oh, good grief. Well, I, I would probably feel more comfortable walking down an alley with one of the MMA guys over a boxer. I think those guys are going to be much more conditioned for street fighting. I mean, Mayweather was clearly a better boxer in the, in the ring. But I think if they had gone an MMA style, I think McGregor would have.
35:40 Chuck Nice? Oh, he would have murdered him.
35:41 Speaker 04 Murdered him.
35:42 Chuck Nice? Like, no, literally, literally, he beat, well, you can't be up on charges because you murdered him in the ring. But right now, quite frankly, people would be like, what a shame, we lost Floyd Mayweather. And by I say people, when I say people, I mean, four people would say that. Because that's about the only people that.
35:58 Gary O'Reilly? You are cruel.
35:59 Chuck Nice? I am.
35:59 Gary O'Reilly? Professor, out of the different fighting styles, which one to your mind, as a physicist, applies the most science?
36:09 Chuck Nice? Hmm, great question. What is the most physics of fighting?
36:15 Speaker 04 Well, given that I don't think there's really anything that science can't touch, describe, or help you understand, I would say that science is going to help you with all of them.
36:25 Speaker 04 I mean, certainly physics is the most fundamental science. So when we're looking at all the martial arts systems, whether you're looking at elegant katas in karate, you're looking at the street fighting of Krav Maga, I mean, physics is going to help you understand all of those movements.
36:40 Chuck Nice? Hmm. Okay, let's talk about the man.
36:43 Gary O'Reilly? You can't, you can't do a show on martial arts and not mention.
36:45 Chuck Nice? This man, one man.
36:47 Gary O'Reilly? Mr. Bruce Lee.
36:49 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
36:49 Gary O'Reilly? Professor, your thoughts, your thoughts on Mr. Bruce Lee, please?
36:55 Chuck Nice? That was my Bruce Lee, did you like it?
36:57 Gary O'Reilly? No.
36:57 Chuck Nice? Okay.
36:58 Speaker 04 He was certainly, uh, small in stature, um, almost no body fat to look at him. Very, very fast, so he had excellent technique, he could hit very hard. Uh, his famous punch with one inch off the person's chest.
37:15 Chuck Nice? Yes.
37:16 Speaker 04 I mean, th- those types of things require a great deal of skill and the, the skill and the technique is gonna be more important than just brute strength.
37:25 Chuck Nice? Now, let me ask you this, cuz you brought up the, uh, the two inch or the one inch punch, which he's famous for, and you see him just like an inch away from somebody's chest, bang, hits them, and then they fly back and fall down into a chair. First of all, is that showmanship? Is that physics? How does that happen if it is physics?
37:45 Speaker 04 Well, he's gonna get a great deal of kinetic linking, starting down at the feet. I mean, he's gonna be able to get a little bit of a push off the floor, turn the hips, turn the torso, get energy out of the legs, get it out of the rotating back. I mean, all of these things are gonna come into play when that fist travels that one inch for the hit. I mean, it's, it's gonna be moving rather quickly, even in that one inch of, of gap.
38:08 Gary O'Reilly? Mm-hmm. Professor, it's been a pleasure. Um, best of luck with the new book, when it comes out, The Science Behind Krav Maga. Um, thank you for being on the show once again.
38:17 Chuck Nice? Mm-hmm.
38:18 Speaker 04 Great to be here, it's a lot of fun.
38:19 Chuck Nice? Always a pleasure.
38:20 Gary O'Reilly? Absolutely.
38:21 Chuck Nice? A judo, a chop, chop, chop.
38:23 Gary O'Reilly? Well, that's our show, Chuck.
38:24 Chuck Nice? That's it, and I somehow am very bruised.
38:28 Gary O'Reilly? Yep, um, we covered a lot of bases.
38:30 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
38:31 Gary O'Reilly? And I'll be honest with you, Krav Maga sounds an awfully interesting sport.
38:36 Chuck Nice? I love it.
38:36 Gary O'Reilly? And we learnt not to mess with the professor, because he has black belts plural.
38:40 Chuck Nice? Who knew that? This guy's dangerous. Like, you know what I mean? He'll beat your ass and then write an equation of how he did it. That's insane.
38:49 Gary O'Reilly? Isn't it just? Right, that's Playing with Science for you, I'm Gary O'Reilly.
38:53 Chuck Nice? And I'm Chuck Nice.
38:54 Gary O'Reilly? We look forward to your company in the future.
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