How To Hit Like A Sledgehammer!
Being in the military meant I never really get to stay in one place for all that long.
In my combatives training, that meant skipping around from style to style depending up what was available on the military base I was assigned to.
Back in the 80′s, before “reality based” stuff really caught on, that pretty much broke down to common traditional karate systems.
Unfortunately, what I often found was that many schools built an entire attack philosophy around more of a “points” system rather than a “kick the shit out of the bad guy” approach.
For example, it’s common in many martial arts schools to use a “snapping” motion with both punches and kicks in which you strike and quickly retract your fist or foot to punch again.
Sound familiar?
This works great if all you have to do is touch a spot on your sparring partner to score a point and need to aim again in case you missed.
It sucks if your goal is to churn some gangbanger’s guts into hamburger!
Here’s why…
Think about the difference between using a hammer versus a sledgehammer.
With a hammer, your aim is to hit a nail and then quickly pick the hammer back up and hit the nail again and again until it finally goes in. Speed is a primary factor in getting the nail in as fast as possible.
When you use a sledgehammer however, your goal is to knock the living hell out of something with as few blows as possible, preferably just ONE.
Well, same goes with your strikes in a real fight.
Since your goal is to end an attack as quickly as possible, you don’t want to be messing around with rapid, “speed punches” that make contact but do little do inflict damage.
I’d much rather get in one good solid “sledgehammer” strike on a vital target that makes my attacker see stars than get in a bunch of faster, less powerful strikes.
Yet this is how most guys strike because they don’t understand how to deliver REAL power into their punches and kicks.
No worries…
Here’s How To Train For REAL Power
In All Your Strikes…
The secret is to NOT focus on the surface of your attacker’s body as the “contact point”. Your ACTUAL target lies somewhere about 6 inches PAST his body.
So when you strike, you want to imagine that your fist or your foot is traveling THROUGH your attacker’s body and literally coming out the other side.
What takes place INSIDE your attacker’s body is nothing short of complete devastation!
First, the force behind your strike is condensed to a much smaller area, focusing all of your power into a tiny section versus diffusing your effort across a wider area like that from a strike that makes contact and then snaps back. (Think of it as the difference between getting shot with a shotgun using buckshot vs. a slug. Slugs leave big wide, gaping holes and do much more damage!)
Second, your strike, although it won’t actually pop out the other side of your attacker’s body, WILL drive deeper into their insides and do more damage.
Training for such a destructive blow is surprisingly easy (though a bit harder to reprogram for those of you who are used to snappy “point strikes”).
When you punch or kick (a bag or a training partner), instead of quickly retracting your strike, make it “stick” to your target as if you were hitting fly paper.
This “stick striking” will very quickly reprogram your brain to avoid retracting your strike and you’ll be able to better mentally imagine your blow traveling THROUGH your target until it becomes second nature.
And that’s EXACTLY what you need to do…
If you’re attacking the ribs, Visualize your fist moving THROUGH your target, snapping bones like twigs and coming out the other side, leaving a wide hole in its wake!
If you’re attacking a leg with a roundhouse kick, imagine that you’re literally shearing off the leg in half.
Head shot? All you want left is shoulders…the head should snap right off.
Getting the picture (as morbid as it may sound)?
The goal here isn’t to actually visualize spurting blood and eyeballs flying through the air…but rather to simply train your body to think beyond surface targets to put more power into your strikes…
…and hit like a sledgehammer!
Jeff- You are absolutely right, we must focus beyond the target to inflict damage.Sport martial arts dont teach that for obvious reasons because people would get hurt in the ring, liability issues. But I wonder if we all have different opinions on what ” traditional martial arts ” is. My view and many years in the arts have taught me and my students that the old ways/traditional arts was all about surviving out in the real world, not beating somebody up for a trophy and recognition. We are a traditional school, we bite,we fight on our feet and the ground,we grab and kick the groin,attack the spine, twist fingers and toes, pull hair while beating the face in, we pinch ( trust me that really fricken hurts), eyeballs are not ruled out, we bring guns to knife fights,in other words there are no rules.In the old days before 1903 thier was no such thing as political correctness in Okinawa and thier training and methods reflected that in kata. So I know we all have our opinions, mine is there are 2 different types TODAY, the candyass traditional wannabes and then the real deal traditionalists that I would not want to get tangled up with unless I had a big gun with alot of rounds. BillR
That’s a great point Bill.
Many people are too quick to downplay “tradition” when there are actually different “traditions”. Old school martial arts really was designed for combat prior to getting watered down for 8 year olds.
Keep it alive man!
hey jeff your completely right in this . i learned that simple and effective technique when i was a teenager. and it still holds true today as when i learned it. but it also works well with working out with or without added weight. it’s all about focusing your mind where you want to be and going for it. lifes little lessons get you farther than you might think.
Another thing I would add is to throw your strikes from your center of gravity. This is unbelievable. I learned this many years ago when I was bangin on a heavy bag and my arms were tired. At that point I relaxed and was just slingin my fists out there and it was almost magical how much more power and snap I was generating – the bag was jumping into the air – with LESS power. These are the benefits of using your center of gravity to strike:
- BALANCE: you’ll never lose your balance, even if you miss
- CONSERVATION: it’s almost effortless power when you don’t use your shoulders and arms to generate power, therefore you can last a lot longer
- SPEED: punches snapped out from the COG are not just magnitudes more powerful but a hell of a lot faster…they snap
- ACCURACY: because all strikes emanate from the same center, your accuracy will increase because the distance from COG to striking tool is consistent, whereas if you are throwing strikes that are not centered, there is no consistency
Maintaining control of and learning to manipulate one’s center of gravity is one of the most important skills in fighting and pretty much ANY activity that requires movement. When you have imposed your COG on the other guy’s, he’s done – he’s like a house built on sand. But most people aren’t even aware of their COG, so they don’t realize the moment it’s compromised till too late. You gotta ALWAYS maintain an awareness of your own center of gravity at ALL times and train yourself to NEVER lose control of it.
PAUL OUT
Great in depth feedback on center of gravity Paul!
Balance is definitely important in any altercation and absolutely CRITICAL to maintaining the offensive position!
Thanks brotha!
I agree about the power strike versus the first strike. However, if you miss the power punch for whatever reason and a limb is out there because it was not retracted quick enough, a savy street figher will capitalize on this. I think there needs to be a happy medium. I think that once the brain is “reprogrammed” to strink in the sledgehammer manner that we must then work and train to increase the speed and retraction of this more powerful way of striking.
I am not, nor have I ever been, a specialist in martial arts. During my nine years in the US Military I was trained in the basic necessities. I also received some specialized HTH, strangely enough in the US Air Force. I was assigned to ABGD (Air Base Ground Defense) and spent some blistering time training at Camp Bullis and Fort Dix with everyone’s favorite pals the Green Berets. I know it sounds like something out of a movie, but they would actually lay in wait and ambush us on our down time when we were walking to town for a pass, or from Fort Dix to the Air Force base next door. They were not friendly about this, and they made us earn our blue berets the AF Law Enforcement and Security Specialists wore back then. One of our Special Forces trainers taught us this same advice and it works. There is no candy coating it. Later, after I got out of the Air Force and switched to the Army, I was with the Special Response Forces. I taught this technique to many of my SRF companions. It had devastating results. A Captain in our ranks was a teacher of Hapkido. He was already familiar with the technique and helped many of us to combine it with speed striking techniques that were more traditional. I must say that if you can find a balance between the two, and employ them both, you’ll be “Rambo” in no time. And I wasn’t paid to leave this comment. Keep up the great work!
great touch! i like it a lot! what a guy really needs is effect, not show.
HELLO JEF
I AM INSTRUCTOR IN KALI,ESKRIMA,WING CHUN,WHILE IN A REAL STREET FIGHT I CANT HIT POWER PUNCH OR KICK AND MY MIND IS OUT OF ORDER,MY FEELING IS I DONT HAVE POWER AND FORCE IN MY PUNCH.
PLS ,GUID ME
THANKS
I’m working for a private security company, and i could see this being extremely useful in the event that something does happen, using this technique could save someone from a brutal beating on the street…. except for the bad guy, Keep up the good work
Thanks for explaining this concept Jeff. Mike Tyson said pretty much the same thing in his recent interview movie,and we all know what a devestating puncher he was/is. There is the possibility of missing the power punch and or getting blocked and countered. One should realize this happens,and some martial arts teach how to catch punches and break arms,likewise kicks can leave the groin open to quick counter kicks.
same thing they taught me in high school football! Go THROUGH the man, not to the man.
–veteran US Navy, submarines
It is true that their is a modern “Sports” mentality that occurs in much of the martial arts. With Karate it occurs with the need to nationalize the martial practices around 1935-36 where the DNBK wanted to see karate come to be like the national tournaments of Judo that had been organized since the last half of the previous century. Then it continued this trend after Allied Occupation forces made it clear that regimented MARTIAL training would not be allowed. So many of the systems survival where dependent on going underground and possibly disappearing as many have. Or to make a sport of it. But the combatives are still there and if taught correctly are devastating.
Now to the meat of this article. The snapping motion is a real technique for generating power for most all white crane kung fu systems. Fa Jing is a whip like thrust that generates twice the power of a sledgehammer blow but takes considerably more practice. Anything traveling in an arc, which includes all joint rotation can follows basic physics. Well the apex of an arc at the point of contact if the energy and apex are synced, form twice the velocity of either side of the approaching or retreating arch. I am a blacksmith and I can generate different types of force depending on the height of the anvil but the reason that the anvil is supposed to be a specific height for a blacksmith has to do with the contact point of the arch of the sledge needs to fall at the exact apex of the total arch. Then the combined velocity of the forward apex and the retreating apex is in the energy transferred to the object. There was a story that was told about the Okinawan master when he was in China having trouble understanding the power in Crane Style ( Fa Jing). He was observing one on a rooftop across the courtyard and contemplating what power there might be in such a slender graceful frame. Then the crane spreads it’s wings snapped once to take flight and shattered the Ceramic tiles with it’s wingtips. Now that is probably a legend made up to make it understood that there was a secret to fa jing and something worth looking into. However if you just want to power through things it can work, if you want to master something it takes time before it can be affective. What then matters is how long do you want to take to be effective. Most agree they do not have years to put into learning fa jing. I certainly agree and never teach it in my self defense classes however that does not degrade or lesson the value of what is in the traditional arts. There is just very few that are actually learning the true traditions of those arts anymore and when you are learning only a part of something you tend to only be partly effective.
Sensei Larry Clements
Owner Instructor Phoenix Eye Dragon Claw Dojo
A point I forgot to mention that some people may not be aware of that brings the previous information into focus a bit more. All Karate systems have elements of Southern White Crane in their practices. Whether they are willing to admit to it or not.
Great distinction between sport and real world. Having spent time years ago training in hand-to-hand with Korean Marines in RVN, their entire focus was the devastation of an opponent, period. Those of us used to stateside training got real rude awakenings, quickly. The breaking of things with hand strikes, for example, was intended not to impress, but to condition the mind to pass through the obstacle, while also passing through the ‘fear of pain’ threshold. Lethal stuff. Some of us had occasion to use the training ‘real world’, with whatever was handy at the moment. It works.
sounds like good information. There is no phone number to contact to order dvd or books. Don’t want to give my credit card number to a strange organization called secure bank. Also, can you actually learn self defense by watching a dvd or reading a book opposed to hands on training.
Love your post.Your new self defense release programme is great ! Thanks Alot =D
Thanks,
Yi Shen.
I am no longer practising Tae Kwon Do but I have felt what a well executed punch with a very fast snap-back can do. Such a blow to the mid-section feels like a light touch on the skin but you can feel the blow on your back bone. I believe that a punch that has maximal speed with a minimal time of contact will deliver a large amount of energy (rather than force). The more time the fist spends in contact the more energy is re-absorbed back through the joints of the wrist, elbow and shoulder. You can think of it as similar to 5 steel balls that hang just touching each other. They have a high elasticity (minimum compression, low time of contact), and if you take 2 and release them, striking the other 3, then the energy released will propel only 2 on the other side. My instructor once gave a demonstration of breaking 5 pine boards with a “chicken peck” using his finger tips, the boards being held together only by one corner in the air by a volunteer. He didn’t just break them, they seemed to explode. It appeared to be more a transferance of energy rather than brute force. This would be difficult to do on a moving target, although possible with a few years practice.
All these posts are good but lacking integration. Speed, snap, punch trhough the target, center of gravity. There is also a rift between learning to defend yourself on the street now, and training for years to master a specific strike. Between point sparing (which is just fun however impractical but does teach speed, timing and footwork) and street fighting (which you can’t practice because you’ll break your friends). I love the discussion but it is possible to find balance if you have the right teachers.
There is such a teacher and a happy medium does exist. All of this can be laid to rest with three words, “Bruce Lees’ Jab.” He taught fun yet practical, traditional yet very progressive. His jab was too fast to even be blocked by experts who knew it was coming. And so devistatingly powerful it could send a man 10 feet. You can’t learn it overnight but neither does it take decades to learn. Practice this and every post on this blog will be in agreement.
The problem is that you must have sledgehammer strength to be able to hit like a sledgehammer. What I mean is that if you are not very strong to begin with, you are not going to be able to hit hard no matter what technique you use.
Most people are not training martial arts, so they already hit “beyond the surface”. Whenever we hit each other in school, it was always “beyond the surface”. So this doesn’t really teach you how to hit harder.
In my opinion, this advice is not for regular people, but for the very few that are training martial arts.
I completely disagree. Strength matters not when it comes to power. In physics, Force = mass x acceleration. Strength has nothing to do with it. Every person has a given mass. Telling someone to accelerate that mass (a fist) through an object will in fact give it more power. I’ve been teaching self defense to average people with no Martial Arts background for many years now. Simply telling them to punch through a targert as fast as they can (not as hard as they can) has them hitting like mac trucks in minutes. I once had a 100 pound 65 year old who could hardly make a padded target wrinkle. The next day, after only talking to him, he was breaking boards. If you don’t believe me, go see a Women’s Full Power Protection graduation. They only train these women for a weekend or two and I can personally garuntee, you wouldn’t stand a chance against a 5 foot, 95 pounder once she has had a couple days with this type of instruction.
you need more than just a day or two, you must be training super beings or something
Hi Tobias. Are you too from Sweden?
I think we are talking about apples and pears here. I can let any 7 year old hit me in the belly, and I would be able to take it. But I couldn’t let Mike Tyson hit me in the belly. The difference is strength, nothing else. There is no technique in the world that would be able to teach a 7 year old hitting hard enough for me to not being able to take it.
Then you write:
“Simply telling them to punch through a targert as fast as they can (not as hard as they can”
Hitting as fast as you can is the same as hitting as hard as you can. There is absolutely no difference.
Breaking boards is very different from hitting someone in the belly so hard that they fall to the ground. A 7 year old will not be able to break the same boards as an adult. In other words, strength has everything to do with it.
Haha that is so true! I don’t know why people tend to use th “snappy” punches rather then full blown power!
This is why I never liked using punching bags. I always imagine my fist going through the sack, so I ALWAYS use ALL of my power when landing a punch or kick to the bag. This may cause an injury on my wrist as the bag is freely moving back and forth and the momentum might fight back your hands/leg/feet.
Anways thanks for the email, Jeff. The stuff you write is beneficial for myself and I enjoy reading all of your emails.
Take care
-Cesar
This is for ARAM, who state “I AM INSTRUCTOR IN KALI,ESKRIMA,WING CHUN,WHILE IN A REAL STREET FIGHT I CANT HIT POWER PUNCH OR KICK AND MY MIND IS OUT OF ORDER…”
Your situation is characteristic of one who has difficulty in handling the “adrenaline rush” that accompanies the natural “fight or flight” syndrome. As a result of that “rush”, you loose fine motor skills. You need to work with “simple” responses/attacks that will use your major muscle groups. You also need to focus that rush of energy on the threat. Otherwise, it will feed your fear, disrupt your concentration and literally “paralyze” your ability to respond.
As someone said force = MASS x acceleration. Your typical 7 year old has less than a third of your average adult`s mass, hence the difference in force! I`ve competed in competition karate, and it always amazed me how preference was given to the competitor who fell victim to a well-executed strike (and most of the time they were completely oblivious to it even coming)! Okay I sort of understand the theory behind it, but how can you possibly say that the person who suffered the strike was the victor? My instructor was quite different to be fair, he had a philosophy of if someone strikes you with a heavy blow during sparring, give as good as you get (as long as that is all it was). While practicing my blows etc. I always imagined using those blows to break objects, it is true that after a period of time it becomes second nature. I found sparring useful in that it does teach you eye, hand, feet co-ordination, distance, speed, accuracy and most importantly in time you are able to predict the strikes before they come. I always found karate a little primitive though, imagine being able to see the strikes and counter with an aikido move instead for example…
Hey Jeff and the rest of ya’ll- I have read all of the above and quite frankly you fellers make alot of sense. Finesse. I know to some this sounds like a faggy word, especially in our macho western society. In our classes, about a zillon times, we would use brute force against 330 pound dudes and about 99.9% times it didnt work. When finesse was used, it worked 99.9%. Now people are thinkin, ya right, the 330 lb dudes were playin along to make us look good. Nope. I would tell them I will give you 2 months of karate classes for free if I cannot get out of a hold or whatever. And I always beg them not to be nice to me because I am old and their beloved sensei. Believe me, they made it much harder. I am a 138 lb skinny white boy and these techniques work so awesome. As some have mentioned above, 7 year olds do not have the body mass to strike like a sledgehammer. But they and other people that have very little body mass wont be able to strike like a sledge but the bad guy will feel they got hit by a train if finesse is involved. Last note. Me and my Guard unit got activated May3 2007 to provide security in Greebsburg Ks after the F5 enhanced 1.2 mile in diameter tornado destroyed 98% of the town. We found a blade of corn leaf in the side of the courthouse brick like a spear embedded in the brick an inch or so. How much did that leaf weight? BillR
Jeff, you and most of these comments are great! There is though one thing being left out….that is “FEAR!” In order to win the fight there can’t be fear in your vocabulary. I have been in a few fights and one blow is all that I have ever needed..Even when I only weighed 95 lbs! I had made a midsection blow with just my elbow and knocked the man down onto his stomach and the wind was knocked out of him. In elementary a hard punch to the mid-section of a bully’s stomach and brought him down to his knees and throwing up. So sometimes it isn’t really necesary to be big and mean, just know where your targets weeknesses are with no fear and know you want to win the battle.
Good Stuff, I always laugh at that Point sparring crud, A bunch of wanna Be fighters. “What if they really got hit I would often say?” I guess that’s why I quit those schools at an early age and got a heavy bag in my basement. I once saw a guy punch a guy in the stomach so hard that the guy crumbled into a writhing ball of pain squirming on the ground. I never forgot how effective that was. I also had a friend that was a Brown Belt in (Kempo Karate Brian Adams school); he kicked the Captain of the High school football team In the rear so hard that he went up in the air and straight down on his butt with a big thump. He never messed with us again. I have always believed that a good hard punch or kick is the only commonsensical approach to an impending attack.
This is by far the first and foremost thing to remember when preparing for fights that actually matter. But I should say that I heard a legend of real fighting explain the same method decades ago, it was Bruce Lee. You can see it it one of the DVD compilations in which he explains the philosophy of real fighting as opposed to the useless components such as form, positions, points, rules…. Good going Jeff
Ok Jeff I get it its back to as the old saying goes war is hell an actual combat is a real S.O. B. Kick ass take names but forget how to write. Keep on keeping on Jeff.!!
Hi Mikael,
As far as hitting as hard as you can vs as fast as you can; there is a difference, but it is mental. You are right to say there is no difference in the end result. But when you tell someone to hit as HARD as they can, what they tend to do is tense all their muscles which slows them down and decreases power. For some reason Thinking FAST makes people relax the antagonistic muscles (the biceps and lats) thus allowing the pecs and triceps to do their job more effectively.
Muscle gives you mass and strength does in fact help. But I can promise you that it is not all about strength. And yes, my 7 year olds are breaking the same boards as the adults. True, very different from hitting a person. But lets look at a more reasonable comparison as I don’t think a 7 year old is a good example. The 95 pound woman vs a 250 pound male. Like the 7 year old, she is roughly 1/3 his mass And clearly very little strength by comparison. Check out You Tube for Woman’s Impact and watch what they do to these guys.
The attackers have to wear a football helmet with an extra 5 inches of high impact foam plus a neck brace to protect themselves because these girls are hitting so hard. And they are doing what Jeff said in the article above, hitting through the target. A buddy of mine used to be one of those mock attackers. He said they hit like sledgehammers and he is now a cage fighter. He tells me he got injured more often being a mock attacker for Woman’s Impact than he ever has in the cage. These women are more powerful than you can imagine despite an obvious lack of strength compared to their attackers.
Strength does not equal power. I used to think it did but I’ve been hit too many times by both strong and skinny-minis, and have been proven wrong too many times to believe otherwise. The only way you will understand this is through experience. Go volunteer to be a padded mock attacker for a woman’s class. For added proof, work the teenagers class. I recommend Ice on the back of your neck. It will be sore from your head snapping back despite the required neck brace.
I think you are spot on with your comment that it’s a menatal difference to tell someone to hit hard compared to fast. But they still don’t get any stronger than what they are to begin with. They just manage to release more of the strength they already have.
I found a couple of videos of the stuff you talked about, but it was very unrealistic. All she did was screaming very loud and long, and she did nothing, yet he flew off her through the air. It was like watching an orange sitting on top of a pea, and suddenly without any reason the orange flew away.
Look, I don’t think we will ever agree. But let me give you some credit:
No doubt a person taking your classes will be better off than they were before.
I don’t want to hijack this thread, so I leave it for now.
Thanks for replying.
I enjoyed the discussion. Its nice to be able to share differing ideas and disagree on a subject in a positive way without getting upset over little things. You made some very good points and got me thinking. Feel like I did the same for you. Thank you.
I thank you for the information. What you have said is very true , the tournament aspect of training was never really meant for actual warfare or street application. It is really just a way of keeping people interested in the arts that are not truely committed to its down to earth survival usage, after all most people are sheep not sheepdogs, they dont really want to think about real confrontations, they just like looking cool and bragging about there accomplishments. I recognize the information from most internal aspects of many arts refering to projection. Thanks again
I have to agree with this. I dicked around with a bit of the sport karate for a while just to see what the whole stereotypical strip mall dojo thing was about, and I found out immediately from a background of MAC that it was just a bunch of bull crap. They acted like this watered down crap was very useful on the street, when they never really made you work on fighting. They paired people together in the ring who are using the same, dare i say it, moves, and the same ‘style’, and thats not going to do you any good in a real altercation. If i was the bad guy on the street, and someone i was going after was throwing all of these high kicks and trying to have perfect form, id throw them on the ground and stomp the shit out of them. They act as if fighting has rules and that you never have to get dirty. My rule is, if you have sand, throw it in their eyes, if youre gonna hit someone, make sure you lay them out. No one on the street cares how good someone is at sparring. If you aren’t ready to deal with them, they’ll mess you up good.
Jeff, thank you very much. I am a Security Guard, and since I got threats I became interested in Self-Defense Training. I do not know much but I have been learning with your awesome Close Quarters Combat videos and some other persons awesome Self-Defense Videos too.
From the bottom of my heart I thank you.
Jose Ramon Avina
Thanks for joining us Jose!
Having been a professional in the security field, I can empathize with your role. People play down the role of the security officer as unimportant but that’s because they’ve never had to walk a parking lot at 2am when the bars are letting out.
Watch your back bro!
Be safe!
Jeff
Hi Jeff,
Bruce Lee often spoke of the same principle of punching “through” the target as explained in your article. I’ve been practicing Muay Thai for over a year now and our instructor has emphasized that fact countless times. I and my other classmates have carried this principle into the ring with excellent results.
For those who have an major issue with not “snapping back” understand that in a real street fight you want to do as much damage in as little time so you can get the hell out of there. Personally I’d much rather hit a guy once or twice and have him in a heap on the floor than hit him a bunch of times so he’ll feel the pain.
Peace and blessings!
CB
I agree with Bill the reall traditionalists are the real thing cept I wouldnt take a big gun to the fight…..I Howatsur now that is a gun I would take.
The navel/ bellybutton area is so tough that it almost won’t hurt at all if you are prepared or tensed up before impact.
The only way to knock a guy down or make him throw up by punching his stomach is to aim higher around the solar plexus which is just below his ribcage.
your right to a point, but if you miss, even by a centimetre then if i guy is trained in ju jitsu will take you out, thats why it’s always good to retract as fast as possible, and thats why you practice strikes with speed precision and power, power alone will not do the trick
power alone will not do the trick, if you miss and your apponent knows jujitsu, you will run into all kinds of problems
It is necessary to be the optimist.
Cool. Thanks for typing this. It is always cool to see someone give back to the public.