By Jeffrey Brooks
Guest Street Survival Newsline Columnist
There are two myths that prevent people from making the most of their bodies and its ability to move and deliver power in a combative situation. Both of these common beliefs come from treating the body as if it were a machine.
Introducing beginners to DT or to martial arts may require a simplified presentation of body mechanics. However, we reduce our effectiveness and jeopardize our safety if we get stuck at that level.
The body moves in a more sophisticated way than any existing machine. If we learn how to tap into its potential, we can increase our tactical ability by orders of magnitude.
Myth #1
Myth number one is that the body moves like a set of levers. If that were true, a punch would look like a straight, linear thrust, like a piston moving in a fixed path.
In that case the power of the punch would be limited to the length of the bones of the arm and the power of the muscles of the arms.
You will be able to produce much more power if your body pivots in the vertical plane adding to the thrust of the arms like a camshaft thrusting pistons forward and pulling them back. Trainees are sometimes told to “put your shoulder into it” or to “use your hips.” That is making use of the cam and piston model of body mechanics.
But the mechanics of cam and piston still produces far less power than the human body is capable of.
The body actually is designed to convey waves of energy, so that every bone and muscle in the entire body, from head to toe, is incorporated in producing the punch (or any other technique.) In this way the punch becomes a ballistic expression of force instead of a merely mechanical one.
Because the joints of our body are spanned by connective tissue and muscle, the angles of relationship between the bones are not like hinged levers. In fact they produce an analog transmission of energy, a flow, like the wave of energy that travels through the length of a whip.
If you learn to use your body to transmit energy in this way, you can increase the power of your strike or kick enormously. No need to add muscle or aerobic capacity (although both are good!)--all you have to do in order to multiply your power right now is to learn to use this principle.
This is not something esoteric, limited to one brand of DT, or limited to martial arts training or combatives.
Using the whole body to transmit energy is fundamental to moving skillfully in all advanced athletics. Look at a pitcher or batter in baseball; a tennis player; a great golfer hitting a ball off the tee; a competitive swimmer making the most of their stroke. Especially if you can see it in slow motion, you will see the way they have learned to use waves of energy moving through their entire body to produce maximum power.
The bodies of those athletes do not look like mechanical systems made of levers. They do not look like cam-and-piston systems. They look fluid and whip-like. That is what we are trying to create in teaching people to punch and block with maximum effectiveness.
In martial arts and in defensive tactics we can make the most of the power inherent in our bodies by using our body as a unified whole system, rather than as a bunch of parts attached together.
Myth #2
A second myth that limits our power is the belief that the lower body is limited to functioning as a moving platform for the upper body. The lower body provides mobility, with the power (the strike or kick) then produced by the limbs.
This is the way a tank functions on a battlefield. The treads serve to position the tank; the gun delivers firepower. There is no integral relationship between the two. (The gun doesn’t assist locomotion and the treads don’t contribute to fire.)
This is also the way an individual rifleman or a battlefield unit of any size will conceive of their operations: maneuver and firepower are two different dimensions of action; both important and related, but always remaining two distinct functions.
In firearms systems the analogy does hold true to some degree, but for empty hand, knife, baton and weapons of opportunity it does not.
For humans doing empty hand, edged weapon, or impact weapon techniques we can take great advantage of a much more integrated way of moving.
For us, the body movement that drives locomotion (moving to a more advantageous position), evasion (avoiding the incoming technique) and power transmission (for hitting or defense) are all generated simultaneously, by a single movement generated from the center of the body.
We are not constructed like treads and turrets. We are a single integrated power system and we will fall short of our fighting potential if we fail to make use of this reality.
About the author
Jeffrey Brooks is a police officer, DT Instructor and Firearms Instructor. He has led a martial arts dojo offering classes daily for 20 years and has practiced martial arts in Japan and the US for 30 years. Jeffrey has published a book and dozens of articles about combatives, training and character that have been widely read and cited. For more information, please visit his Web site.
