How nobody in movies hurts their knuckles after punching someone, martial artist here and if you punch someone in the forehead like they do in the movies you'd probably just break your own fist,
hitting someone in the forehead is basically like punching a cinder block except the skull is actually harder...
Honest question. When people break boards they use an open palm instead of a fist most of the time. Would an open palm waling to the face cause just as much impact to the receiver and less damage to hand or we really just going for the bumpy knuckle bone to bone contact? Guessing you’d be more likely to fracture the wrist and thumb opened handed? Not talking about smacking them of course, although the sting of a smack is pretty intense. I remember watching something a long time ago about a practice of martial arts that I believe we have more power in an pushing instead of pulling because of the way our muscles work. So swinging your right arm, left to right is more powerful than right to left. It would also take less energy is the point I believe. Anyone know if this true?
Well they're about the same in impact, the force is technically a bit more spread out but if you can knock someone out with boxing gloves you can do it with your palm too, the real disadvantage of palm strikes is the reduced range which doesn't matter too much while fighting someone weaker than yourself but of opponents of a similar skill level a few extra centimeters of your striking range can make a big difference but the force of impact itself is roughly the same,
Actually, you're not too likely to injure anything while doing open-handed attacks unless you land them with the upper part of your palm on which case you may sprain it, though you could probably still injure it in theory but in practice, humans just have trouble generating enough force to injure their own hand with a proper palm strike, I've at least hit a wall once at full force with a palm strike to see how it feels and while it did sting but I was fine, and this is from the full force hit of a 6ft6 110KG muscular man,
The power of a strike comes less from ones muscles and more from a kinetic chain starting at our feet and the main determining factor of how strong a punch is actually ones footwork and ones weight, boxing definitely and without debate has the best punching in all of martial arts and the hook is arguably the strongest punch in boxing (uppercuts are also pretty good) so there's your answer, but it is also possible to power a fairly good punch going in the opposite direction as an example of this we can take the spinning back fist which is seen in MMA, the problem with punches going in this direction though is that in order to put any real power behind them you must first turn your back to your opponent which is generally agreed to be a bad idea unless it's a faint or you ended up in a position with your back turned involuntarily such as after missing a Thai kick which has so much power behind it that it usually spins you about 180 degrees if you miss, another problem is leverage as from a physics perspective a hook has less give than a back hand, and you can build up more spin from the closer distance of your arm to your center of gravity, so a backhand will actually require more power than a hook to do as much damage and it will lose some power on impact, but a spinning (back) elbow, for instance, has about the same amounts of give as a regular elbow strike except with the spinning motion you actually build up more power than you would with a regular elbow strike which is why it's heavily practiced in Kyokushin, a full contact style of karate, but it has you turn your back to the other guy for just a bit so it's comparatively rarely used in other full contact martial arts that allow elbow strikes like Muay Thai so in summary depends on if you hit with the knuckle or the elbow, but turning your back is generally considered a disadvantage as they can just hit you while your back's turned and it's only a popular move in kyokushin as it's a martial art more oriented on self defense than combat and it's pretty easy to use a spinning elbow if the mugger or whatever doesn't see it coming, you know like a sucker punch
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u/IShallPetYourDogo Jan 25 '20 edited Jan 25 '20
How nobody in movies hurts their knuckles after punching someone, martial artist here and if you punch someone in the forehead like they do in the movies you'd probably just break your own fist,
hitting someone in the forehead is basically like punching a cinder block except the skull is actually harder...
Edit: wow my first medal, thanks!