🚀 go-pugleaf

Glenn Proctor (proctor@yorvic.york.ac.uk) wrote:

: I have a friend who is interested in the biomechanics of body
: movement, with particular emphasis on punching etc in karate.

: The techniques used are often described as being "like a whip" but as
: yet we have found no concise, comprehensive description of precisely
: how a whip works.

Having done some karate myself (and having the ambition to continue :)
I guess what they are referring to is this technique of first making
a movement with your hips a fraction of a second before the arm is
pushed out in a straight line to the target.  Personally it made me
think of a running wave, starting from your hips and going over your
shoulders into your arm and finally in your fist.  As the masses of
these things (hips, shoulders, arm, fist) decrease, and increasing
acceleration (I guess to keep about the same energy in the wave crest)
is observed, with the fist hitting the target very hard.  It takes
a while before one learns to synchronise these movements correctly,
but once one does it right, the effect really shows.
Perhaps a whip is based onto the same idea of letting a transverse
wave run through material with decreasing mass per unit length, but
that I don't know.

cheers,
Patrick.

--
Patrick Van Esch
http://www.iihe.ac.be/hep/pp/vanesch
mail:   vanesch@dice2.desy.de
for PGP public key: finger vanesch@dice2.desy.de