Recently I was lucky enough to have a sit-down conversation with some very talented and long-training martial arts enthusiasts. Talk turned to the idea of knock out punches. As the holy grail of any fight--in or out of the ring--I was interested in hearing their perspective on the subject, especially their mechanical understanding of the phenomenon. What it boiled down to was this: "When you hit him on the button, the body just shuts down."

When I asked for elaboration, it turned out that that one sentence was pretty much the end of it. 'The button' was the chin, so the 'how' was covered--"hit him on the chin." (Though this is an awfully thin 'how'.) The 'why' was completely missing. No one had any idea, really. It was just something that sometimes happened, and when it did it was awesome; when it didn't it meant you were in for a drawn-out scrap.

You can see hours and hours of video on the net of (mostly) young men getting knocked unconscious--and yet, there are almost as many instances (if not more) of people getting hit 'on the button' and powering through just fine. Why should that be?

Everyone who trains, whether a martial artist or combat sports practitioner, expects that what they know will work. They've been told it works, it worked when it was shown on them, and (hopefully) they were able to make it work in training. So the expectation is there--what you know works. You'd bet your life on it, right?

My question to you is 'why does it work?' Seriously. Think about it. Not just right now--spend some time on this. In the end, if you can't articulate why something works, chances are you can't make it work every time you need it to. And that's not something you can bet you life on.

Next week I'll be back with the answer. In the meantime, really give it some thought: Why does it work?

Labels: combat sports, mixed martial arts, MMA, self defense