Secret of the One Punch Knock Out!

One of the reasons Karate waned while Mixed Martial Arts grew was that people couldn’t knock people out or even down with a Karate punch. This does not signify that Karate, or kung fu or other classical martial arts don’t work, it just means that the knowledge on how to knock a person out with one punch has been lost.

The above noted, if you want to knock somebody out with one punch, it is going to take a bit of work. Even Mohammad Ali (Cassius Clay), relied on luck for his famous ‘phantom punch,’ which knocked out Sonny Liston. But there is a precise technology to make this stunning knock out punch work. The technology is in the martial arts, but has largely been forgotten.

One Punch Knock Outs are Possible!

Back when I started Karate training, in the sixties, the knock out punch was known and sought by martial arts students. They practiced the technique endlessly. And, in the non contact tournaments of the time, when accidents happened and contact was actually made, people went down.

The actual physics of the punch are quite simple.

First, the the punch must be a snapping punch. The student should work as hard on the retraction of the fist as the explosion outward. The reasoning behind this was that if a punch was extended and left out, if it was a thrusting punch instead of a snapping punch, the force would come back down the arm.

But, if you throw a snapping punch, then the impact was left in the body, as the force didn’t have time to come back down the arm.

And that’s all there was to it! Uh, almost.

As simple as that sounds, it does take fanatical practice to make work, and there is one more element that a person should consider.

There was an incident on a university medical campus where a student had taken a cell culture and was walking across the campus. He stumbled, dropped the culture, and it broke on the ground. All the cells in that culture, of course, died. Oddly, all the cells in the original culture also died.

So cells are connected. Well, of course, anybody knows that. If somebody steps on your toe, your whole body reacts.

So, if somebody hits you on the outer layer of skin, but hard enough to jar the cells themselves, the whole body is going to react.

What we are talking about is depth of strike.

You don’t have to hit deep, as, again, the arm will absorb part of the shock of your punch. You just have to hit right, snapping, and with the intent to leave all the trauma in the cells. And, of course, it helps if you hit a sensitive area. Hit the jaw just right, with enough snapping force, there is going to be reaction, and the body is going to crumble. Hit the testicles, or an area in which a pressure point is located, and you are going to have success…your opponent is going to go down.

The problem is that people don’t trust this method unless they have trained long years in it. And, people lack the intention, the idea behind the punch, which is one of the things that long years of practice will build up in the student.

Anyway, whether you study karate or kung fu or any other classical martial art, that is how you knock somebody out with one punch.

And, if you don’t study the martial arts and want to knock somebody out with one punch…then maybe you should head down to check out your local karate class or kung fu class.