This really doesnt prove much.
For instance, the kung-fu guy was smaller then the karate and TKD guy so of coarse the power would not be as good. For any of them, the TKD guy got great ratings because well...he's pretty big.
They were right to bring in fairly good MArtial artists.
But some of them were better then others, and sizes DO matter.
Doesnt change who is tougher or not, but size does matter.
Some were bigger then others. Sorry to say, but that really messes up results.
You obviously didn't watch it properly because they stated the various body mass/sizes of the combatants as a factor. So they did consider exactly what you said they didn't. I know because I also pre-empted this fact before they stated it.
shareMy problem wasn't that size wasn't taken into account. (I didn't notice them saying that masses were accounted for). The thing that bothered me is that they dumbed down the science. They gave forces with units of pounds...this is not what force is. Either the scientists didn't know what they were talking about (doubtful) or they dumbed it down so that people wouldn't be faced with new words to describe things like force (Newtons).
shareZeppelinfromled:
1 pound = 4.44822162 Newtons
Pounds and Newtons measure force - Slugs and Kilograms measure mass
I can’t believe everyone agreed with you...
You are completely wrong. As an aerospace engineer (or an 8th Grade Science student), permit me to explain:
Slugs, pounds and kilograms are all measurements of MASS, or the amount of matter in a body.
The newton (lowercase when you write the word) is a measurement of FORCE or WEIGHT. They are measured with the same units, but weight is the measured effect of gravity on mass.
For convenience or ease of understanding for people who have less technical understanding, FORCE is sometimes (somewhat incorrectly) given in units of MASS. Correctly (see www.onlineconversion.com) the suffix -force should be given after the unit. For example:
1 kilogram-force = 9.806 65 newton
1 pound-force = 4.448 221 6 newton
But
1 kilogram = 2.204 622 622 pound (measurement of mass)
I can believe everyone agreed with Zeppelinfromled, since that explanation was correct.
The one concept that does bother me is the basis of the paticular stylists technique and attributing it to a single martial art for instance a spinning back kick can be found everywhere from Muay thai to Karate to say that it's specifically a Tae Kwan Do kick attributes some sort of uniquness to the art that doesn't exist.
shareI'm surprised people haven't bitched about perhaps the stupidest point of all:
They isolated individual factors and did not measure them as a whole. For example, they measured "pure strength" from a strong punch, and then measured "pure speed" from a fast punch. They did not, however, measure both strength and speed from the *same* punch. While speed will contribute to force, you could definitely tell that the boxers punch wasn't particularly fast. You could also tell that the Kung Fu guys super fast punches had little force behind them.
That and the choreographed fights were just silly. Especially with all the flashy jump kicks and whatnot, it detracts from what I thought would be the value of the program: Showing the practicality of traditional martial arts.
I agree. For example, I was surprised to hear that a TKD punch was powerful. As far as I know you usually don't practice target punching in TKD, it's more kick-oriented. Why didn't they let the Pumphrey guys punch the dummy? Why didn't they let Gracie punch the dummy? Why didn't they tell Foster or Menor to roundhouse-kick the dummy? TKD and Mui kicks are very powerful, maybe not as powerful as a 35mph car crash (which they could've also mentioned in pound to compare to Foster's kick), but it's still interesting how much power the roundhouse can generate.
I was disappointed by the fact that they just got a bunch of famous and yes, extremely good martial artists, and claimed a certain single technique they used on the show represents their arts and that a TKD punch is more powerful than a Kung Fu punch. It just seemed like there was something missing.
I really didn't care about the science aspect of the show. I was mainly just entertained by seeing all of the different fighting styles. Did anybody else think that the guy who practiced drunken boxing was just awesome. I have never seen anything like that before. Talk about someone who can be deceptive during a fight.
shareIf I really wanted to learn real martial art to protect my self and to live longer, I would never chose Tae Kwon Do. The real problem with Tae Kwon Do is quite simple and that is not a martial art its a sport Art. Big difference.
In sparring with classmates there are rules but out in the street, there's no rules and thats where Tae Kwon Do fails. 75% legs 25% hands. come on !!!!
Everybody have different opinions and I of course respect opinion from other individuals but my life is so much important then winning a gold medal or silver medal in the olympics. Martial art wasnt use for winning trophys or gold medal but to survive to live another day . Think about it
I thought this show was pretty impressive, those guys that trained in the hard body stuff, the way they showed the force busting through the blocks was pretty cool. i was mpressed with how much power was acctually delivered... yes i'm sure alot of the show was dumbed down, but many of the things they did were interesting. having the guys run up those poles to show how ninjitsu differs. the stuff about the size, well, alot of it is technique, and they did explain that faster punches were weaker than the single knock out punches, they did that all with the different weapons and contrasted the hard body breaking to the efficient quick strikes. i think they did a good job at least putting the information onto reasonable benchmarks.
people used to do alot of things for survival that we do for entertainment and sport now... eating, hunting, sex.... stuff gets competitive... not like you can just run down the street and find some ninjas to fight
tae kwan do is a useless martial art when it comes to fighting and protecting yourself :)
Tae Kwan do is more flashy, high kicks with top of foot etc. If you want to seriously protect yourself, train in Mauy Thai kickboxing or Chinese kickboxing. Both cut out all the bs, and just work on keepign yourself guarded, and striking hard with shins, elbows, and punches.
Too many martial arts are more ritual than refined. (Bruce Lee's biggest complaint)
Stick to the basics if you want to really defend yourself. Mauy Thai is a great place to start. Wing Chun is good... you really want to study the refined and simple striking martial arts. They're designed to be effective, not showy.
I love modern Wu Shu, dont get me wrong. But any Wu Shu practioner knows, the basic kicking, punching and blocking techniques of chinese kickboxing are more effective than southern/northern style animal forms etc.
Tae Kwan Do doesnt utilize the body well, the kicks are poor, and dont emphasis maximum impact and damage. You try some of those tae kwan do kicks in a real fight, you can end up on your back real fast. You can also break the top of your foot very easily.
Go with mauy thai, and kick with your shins, knees, and strike with your elbows, and fists.
And since many fights end up on on the ground, its good to know some grappling.
Remember your opponent is not going to play your game. He's not going to move like your classmates. He's not going to throw those high kicking korean style kicks at your head. Most of the time your enemy wont know how to fight... but they could still manage to punch you hard. Learn the basics of kickboxing and so you dont get caught up with the flashy moves, and concentrate on the effective techniques at delivering maximum pain :)
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I do not know whether I can really agree with you regarding Tae-Kwon-Do being useless. I think it all depends on the situation one is in. My background is in Karate (> 12 years) and Judo (>5 years). I started off with Karate because I found it much more useful in case of a street fight (fortunately never had to prove it). But after long discussion with my sensei we agreed that deescalation is sometimes sorely needed in a street fight and I started taking up Judo. And then came the situation that we all dread (and lets be honest, look forward to): Drunk guy comes up to me and starts punching. Using Karate would have ended the fight pretty quickly, I know, but with a nice armlock I was also able to persuade him to stop fighting and we were able to finish this situation without a violent escalation. Looking back (after all the adrenaline had been flushed out of the system) I was glad that I was able to stop the fight before it really started.
My two cents
Short add-on: I of course have to agree that all the flashy moves in reality add up to nothing.
oviously You are a fcking idiot.
say Tae-Kwon-Do is useless ?
Ha! Chinese don't even have kickboxing dude!
u r just making these facts up man
u know what's gay ? Kung-Fu and Wu-Shu and Bruce Li even pointed out that
Kung fu and wh shu is not much of speak of when it comes to real combat.
yeah so suck that
If you want martial art to protect yourself, try San Soo.
San Soo is a combat art, they teach you things like groin and organ strikes, leverage, eye gouging, hair pulling, biting, attacking arteries, nerve strikes, wrist locks.
The point of it is to be able to take someone down as FAST and efficiently as possible so they never have a chance to hurt you, even if they're much bigger than you.
As far as this documentary goes, its one of my favorites I've ever seen, and I Tivo the History Channel many times a week, along with the occaisional national geographic or discovery channels.
I loved the exposure to and history of various martial arts of the world, along with learning more about weapons styles.
I totally agree, it only measures the skill and power of individual martial artist but they hardly represent the kind of martial arts as a whole for them to jump into any conclusion.
http://lucidreview.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!440102B20B2BC182!163.entry
Biggest problem for me was the australian guy and the katana. Why did they used him to do most of the slashing, when they could have used the pro's (the japanese master and his students). Seriously, that guy was just ridicilous.
shareapparently, APPARENTLY (i just heard) that the true pro dudes that came in refused to cut the ballistic gel. I don't know why. Probably wasn't traditional or something so they stuck to the bamboo. the TKD guy with the katana was really irritating me. Who the hell twirls a katana in the air?
shareIf that is the case then it is probably because of their style. Toyama Ryuu is known for their focus on tameshigiri and not much else. And even then they are far from good. They were most likely afraid that the ballistics gel would not be as forgiving as the tatami rolls and that they would ruin their blades.
Before anyone asks about my opinions regarding Toyama Ryuu I will go ahead and explain that I have seen them in tournaments and noticed how often they have had to straighten their blades after bending them in a round of tameshigiri.
Of course a 200lb boxer is going to hit harder than a 100lb kung-fu guy.
(note the weights are just examples)
Remeber, everyone, that the point of this show was to prove/disprove the myths, not to compare the arts against each other. Even though the actual details of their science seemed a little silly, the point stands that all of those myths were proven to have truth to them.
shareHave to say, I also flipped out when I saw the Aussie flip the sword like it was a baton. Absolutely no respect, but they seemed to want to market the show around that guy and the "ninja" (yeah right) Also thought bows and stars were silly in that show, since guns became the "ultimate weapon" later, hence why many asian countries had problems with western invasion.
Overall, they went over the top on attempted entertainment, in my opinion, but if you cut through the bs, there was some interesting science in there and true masters of arts to be awestruck by.
The show I think was made more to look cool than to to do true experiments. Many of the artists they got were stunt actors or part-time actors plus if it was more science driven it would get a lot lower tv rating
You could figure out which style would win before a lot of each of the experiments. For example the force exerted by the muay thai guy and the ju jitsu guy of course were going to be enormous, because they were holding the head and driving into it, two opposing forces - a collision, instead of a one ended collision. The hammer fist being like a car collision was somewhat of a surprise because I know guys beat on their chest all the time a la king kong.
Any middle schooler would know there were too many variables in each experiment. If they wanted to make a true experiment since they spent all that money, they probably should have gotten guys with similar skill and build or proportion the independent data variables into the final results on an equivalent scale.
A good show nonetheless, I know now to be more careful at the bar or walking down the street and pissing some random Aussie off trying to look like a shaven chuck norris because he might have a katana and slice me up like banana jello and feed me to the ninja cat.
I thought the chick with the three section staff was pretty hot though (flexible and violent, plays with chains and sticks), what do you guys think?
every passing minute is another chance to turn it around - vanilla sky
I agree and disagree with this posting.
For the sake of putting on a show, the producers obviously took much artistic license and simplified the science/data for the layman. If we understand that, then much of what is portrayed in the show needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
I've been studying martial arts/martial philosophy for 21 years now and I have to say that the producers should get kudos for trying to put together a respectable portrayal of what many people have devoted our lives to studying and perfecting.
However, I think they deserve a big thumbs down for using an XMA athlete/Taekwondo practitioner (i.e. Foster) as an expert in Okinawan weapons/Japanese iai in addition to other techniques (i.e. punching). Case in point: at about 1:04, he's spinning the bo like a propeller, saying that in ancient times, a master could spin the staff "so fast as to repel arrows from a bow". Apparently, he's never used a traditional rokushakubo (often made from solid oak, with a non tapered 1.5" to 2" diameter.). And his technique with the katana is obviously suited to the tournament floor, and not representative of any iai ryu, as shown by his terribly incorrect "Sho Kosugi ninja sword" grip on the tsuka and even more horrible cutting and thrusting technique. With a proper cut, the blade would have made it through the ballistics gel with ease (Cold Steel did a cutting test on a side of pork rib, bones included, and was quite successful) - Mr. Foster was just hacking.
I could go on about Mr. Foster, but it's just not worth it. He's a talented taekwondo practitioner, and tournament competitor - just don't try to pass him off as an expert in traditional Okinawan/Japanese weaponry.
Overall the show was entertaining, and for the most part, honourable to martial arts practititioners. It gives credence to many of the techniques that practitioners perfect in theory, and frankly, I'm envious and would love to be able to see how my technique would fare against a crash test dummy, or a bust of ballistics gel.
rl-10, u sound like a jackass. Tae Kwon Do kicks not being powerful? you are joking right? and whats that about them using only the top of the foot? In traditional TKD most kicks are either with the heel or the ball of the foot. the 'top of the foot' is used mainly in WTF/ Olympic TKD sparring where the object is speed and efficiency, not power. But it is important to understand that WTF TKD is very different from traditional TKD. Also you say that Muay Thai is a very good art for self defense, but name me one move in MT that traditional TKD doesnt teach. That's what most naysayers dont realise. The Koreans have always had a powerful self defense system and TKD evolved from the battlefield and is still taught to the Korean army. Comparing Olypmic TKD with traditional TKD for its power and effectiveness is like comparing the sport of fencing with actual swordfighting.
Jusqu'ici, tout va bien... l'important c'est pas la chute, c'est la terrisage.