Science take on Martial Arts
 

National Geographic special that tries to scientifically analyze different fighting techniques to determine which one has the strongest hits, kicks and deadliest weapons. Found this on fanpop. A must watch if you are a martial arts fan. Runs about 90 minutes.
(I stuck it here given the subject matter. Mods feel free to move it if you think it should go somewhere else)

http://www.fanpop.com/spots/documentaries/links/16972

Awesome video, thanks for the link

That was a very cool video. I liked how they covered almost everything.

I'm glad they gave western boxing, jiu-jitsu, and muay thai some props, often times in these specials they only give attention to flashy styles that often aren't very effective (i.e. kung-fu, tkd etc).

I thought it was funny that TKD guy didn't wear a shirt the entire time (I think he was trying to impress the lady engineer) :)

The segment about the brick breakers was humorous as well. I'm not sure why they train breaking bricks so much, are they often attacked by evil blocks of ice and cement?

Shurikens look cool, but I was thinking about it, what's to stop someone from pulling out the shuriken (looked like penetration was about 1-2 inches) and throwing it back at YOU? I'm sure the person would be in a lot of pain and bleeding copiously, but I think it's certainly a risk.

Oh man, only watched about 5 min of this so far but I can tell that this is going to be amazing.

Is there any way I can save this video??

This is such a quality program. I've seen the second half on the National Geographic channel a few times before. Only problem is that all the martial artists are different (height, weight, conditioning, etc). It doesn't look like they took that into account for a lot of the tests.

Should be able too. I was able to grab the link for the flv file that is being played- http://free.guba.com/uploaditem/3000028736/flash.flv

It looks to be about 600megs too. It should be as easy as playing the flv file in flash, or finding something to convert it. I'll mess around with it, unless someone already knows how to do it. Anyone who has saved videos from youtube probably has already done stuff like this before.

I watched with my son a while back....he thought it was AWESOME! Especially the things you could do with long sticks ......:p

The penetration would very quickly put a person into shock, theoretically. It doesn't take much of a stab wound to force the body to react. However, I suspect it is like the mythical groin strike, more likely just piss someone off until they run out of adrenaline.

Veritas et Lux!
Jimmy The Hutt

This is was what I was thinking too. It's not fair to pit the boxer against the kung fu-er in a punching contest when the boxer is 2-3 times his size.

However, they did mention that mass matters for punching. (I'm only about 30 min in)

It has some problems with the online converters, so I'm going to try the free Riva FLV Encoder to convert it. There is also a free FLV viewer on the same site to get around the converting and just playing it directly

http://www.rivavx.com/index.php?downloads&L=3


**Edit: works fine in the Riva viewer, didn't get around to trying to convert it

The problem with comparing the different styles is that they are good in different situtations. That's why the worlds best fighters are MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) using the best aspects of all of them.

If I had to pick the last person on earth to fight it would be Mirko Cro Cop from Pride and K1 (and recently UFC). He's probably a tie for the best, (with Fedor) and he used to be head of the Croatian Anti Terrorist task force as well so he's a master with his fists and feet, and a wide variety of weapons as well.

Yeah but he wears funny shorts :eek:

I agree that different styles are more appropriate for different situations and that MMA is well-rounded, but MMA is still just a sport with some rules (albeit less restrictive than most sports).

For instance, a well placed throat strike or grab (particularly in Asian martial arts) is a killing blow. Crush damage to the trachea at the cricoid ring will cause the airway to collapse and the subject to suffocate.

Neck-breaks are also excluded from competition sports for obvious reasons.

It serves no real purpose to think there's one "best" martial arts out there. Bruce Lee made that point many times - that Jeet Kun Do is really about practicing what is appropriate for the situation and for your individual body habitus. He alluded to this notion in his movies when he'd bite someone's leg to get out of a hold.

While getting an inch an half to two inches of steel stuck in you in is enough to put the body into shock if you get hit int he right place, I think the thing that made shuriken effective was the poisons they were used as deliver systems for. :D

Its on youtube too. you can save it there. Im watching it now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAF9J-RmXuc

yeah, shuriken were designed to slow down pursuit, and discourage it- little pieces of metal with feces on them, or something worse, tend to slow down the calvary a bit.......

and as to the best MA issue, nothing covers everything , it is far better to think of martial arts as a tool box, and use the best tool for the job, rather than trying to find one that is a multitool.... my comp would implode from the video, but I will somehow see it, cause it seems to sound like it tries to provide a good descrip of the different "tools"

Great documentary.

My hands are proven lethal weapons.

Just pull my finger and you'll see.

not shurikens, caltrops.


http://dictionary.laborlawtalk.com/p...px-Caltrop.jpg

nasty little buggers.


I'm trying to rework them so they will be effective against stay-flats :p

Very interesting and analytical view of a lot of systems, I saw a lot of myths in my own mind, especially the weapon stuff, went away. I think by using size (big boxer vs little kung fu-er) went to the far end of the spectrum to make a point.

Hey, cool. I've been looking for this last summer when I saw previews on the big screens at work. Thanks man. :thumbsup:

Do you work for Circuit City?

Can you get me a PS3?:oogle: