StarTalk Radio - #ICMYI: Martial Arts – Fight Like a Physicist

Episode Date: September 21, 2017

Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly get schooled on the martial arts by two fighting physicists: Jason Thalken, who has a Black Belt in Hopkido, and Prof. John Eric Goff, who has a Black Belt in Karate.Don’t miss an episode of Playing with Science. Subscribe to our channels on:Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/playing-with-science/id1198280360?mt=2GooglePlay Music: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Iimke5bwpoh2nb25swchmw6kzjqSoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/startalk_playing-with-scienceStitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/startalk/playing-with-scienceTuneIn: http://www.tunein.com/playingwithscienceNOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch/listen to this entire episode commercial-free: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/martial-arts-fight-like-a-physicist/ Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. And this is Playing With Science. Today we delve into the amazing world of martial arts. And guaranteed, by the end of this show, you'll possess the skills of a ninja. Okay, we may have to retract that last statement. You think? A judo, a chop, chop, chop.

Okay, put it this way. You may possess the skills of a ninja. You may not. How's that? Better? Yeah, that's better. That's a lot better. You know what I mean?

That was a great disclaimer, okay? I'm going with you're going to be a ninja, a kick-ass ninja. And teaching us to fight like a physicist will be Jason Falcon. Oh, fuck. Shit. Let me do it again. Yeah. And teaching us to fight like a physicist is Jason Falcon, author of, you guessed it,

Fight Like a Physicist. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And also on the show is our good friend from Lynchburg College, Virginia, Professor Eric Goff, author of Gold Medal Physics, and whose new book is coming out in 2018, and it's called The Science Behind Krav Maga, the Israeli military fighting technique. Yeah, so once again, two perfect guests for playing with science. That's right. Okay.

I love this show, man. See, martial arts for me, you go much further than kung fu. Everybody knows karate. Right. Or they know of karate. And then there's judo, jiu-jitsu, and taekwondo, and all these different things that come together. And you're thinking, the mad kids in the class, they're going there because they want to beat people up. And then there's these other guys who are going there, I'm fed up being beaten up.

I'm going to go and learn martial arts. Exactly. And then the pop culture explodes and you look no further than Bruce Lee. The man himself entering the dragon. Oh, man. Fists of fury. And however long they were made ago, you still watch them and go, wow. As a matter of fact, the cool thing is I found this video online.

You want to tell us publicly about this? Yeah. And I got to tell you, it's this great video of they're talking about whether or not Bruce Lee would be a great MMA fighter. And we should take a listen to it. Just take a listen to this. It's a guy just narrating. And as he's narrating, you need to just kind of imagine Bruce Lee very, very, very quickly with his hands doing movements, like these incredible movements that you can barely

see that's how fast his hands are going take a listen bruce lee's style of jeet kune do is known as the way of the intercepting fist and if we reference a line from his tao of jeet kune do quote the counter-attack calls for the greatest skill the most perfect planning and the most delicate execution of all fighting techniques. It is the greatest art in fighting, the art of the champion. Understanding this makes better sense of what he's doing. Throughout this sparring, he essentially feels his opponent's rhythm and when he feels or sees breaks in his opponent's rhythm, with his lead leg or lead hand, he counters his

opponent amidst their attack. He leads with his right hand and right leg, taking the stance from fencing philosophy. It almost looks like Bruce is holding an EPR fencing sword in the way he holds his right hand out. If you also notice, Bruce's stance is very balanced, not all the weight on his lead nor all the weight on the back leg, allowing him to move in and out very efficiently. His training was different, the same way a boxer's training is different from a mixed martial artist.

And so when you see him doing two finger push ups, he's not doing that just for show. He's doing it because it allows him to more efficiently rip your throat from your neck, eliminate your eyes, exploit vulnerable areas of your body, and if he misses, and say hits your skull, minimizes injury. But considering the speed precision and his talent striking as you come in he probably will not miss so that leads to another question what if bruce did compete in mma the cool thing is like you know this jeet kune do is you know his style he kind of like perfected and um you know, he kind of augmented this style to create his own kind of martial arts.

But it gives me the feeling martial arts is ever evolving. And we'll probably get into this with the good professor, Eric Goff. Yes. But, I mean, Bruce Lee was a student of Ip Man. And if you've ever seen the movie Ip Man and there's an Ip Man 2 and everything else, go check it out. So Ip Man was a real man? Uh-huh. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. So there was the movie with Jason Lee, Bruce Lee's son. Yes. And I think I remember one scene, there is a black and white photograph in a frame on a desk with Ip Man and Bruce Lee and it was just kind of like a homage to the past and where Bruce had come from himself so and and his lineage goes down even further because then Bruce trained somebody who trained somebody who's now Conor McGregor's trainer you know and so it's funny and but they all kind of change things to their own needs and liking. And then one of Bruce Lee's students was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Absolutely. Who we had on the show and he talked about that. It's amazing that Bruce Lee, this fat-free little guy with unbelievable speed, has a 7'2 basketball star and is still the all-time point scorer record holder in the NBA so it really is just a an interesting sport so let's welcome our first guest Jason Thalcon thanks for joining us Jason how are you I'm doing good yourself we are fabulous thank you for asking so for those of you who are not familiar with Jason Thalcon, he has a PhD in physics, has studied and competed in eight martial arts. I won't mention how long just because it might offend him,

and I don't want to offend a guy who's got that much talent in his hands. But he does have a black belt in Hapkido. Hapkido? Yes, and he also has a book to his name. He is the author of Fight Like a Physicist. Of course. And the incredible science behind martial arts. Jason, welcome to Playing With Science. Have I left anything out? Thank you

for having me. You're welcome. So I gotta know, man. I Hapkido. What is Hapkido? So Hapkido is a Korean martial art, which it came from the Japanese Jiu-Jitsu. So Korea's got Taekwondo, which largely stemmed from Japanese karate, and Hapkido, which largely stemmed from Jiu-Jitsu. Let's address the obvious point here. Do physicists have an advantage when it comes to martial arts because of their scientific background and the way that they approach things and the understanding of physics I

would say absolutely but but you know the the difference is you know You might think that the advantage happens like in real time in the fight But but really the advantage comes to what you think about when you train, you know How you train stuff like that And that's sort of the mindset I try to get at in the book is, you know, try to approach your training like you're a scientist. So when you're approaching your training like a scientist, is it a matter of knowing the principles of physics behind what you're doing? Is it a matter of breaking down your regimen in such a way where you're using or you're looking at it like it's a scientific discipline? Is it applying the laws of physics themselves in individual cases? How exactly are you approaching the fighting or the training as a scientist? So some of it is stuff like understanding a law of physics here and there.

So if you understand something like your center of gravity, it'll help you out so much when it comes to takedowns. That's a simple explanation. So your center of gravity is about, let's say, like an inch and a half, two inches below your belly button. Okay. And you can think of that as sort of your center point. That's where you would balance no matter what orientation you're in. So if someone pushes you above your center of gravity, you'll lean back. If they push you below your center of gravity, you'll lean back. If they push you below your center of gravity, you'll

flop forward. Um, and so any takedown, uh, whether it's a, you know, a sweep or a takedown or a tackle or, or even just a push or a throw, it all comes down to moving that center of gravity away from the supports that you have, which is usually it's your two feet if we're talking about fighting from a standing position. Okay. So the only things you need to consider are what's going on with that center of gravity and where are the supports and why can they not get back under that center of gravity before it hits the ground that

basic understanding of that principle will get you through your training a lot easier so now instead of having to memorize oh i have to do this specific sweep in this specific way you understand why that technique is the way it is you know you understand because in a you know in a fight in in a fight in a tournament in a competition nothing turns out the way you planned it to you know nothing's a you know as perfect as you practiced it right but if you understand why the technique is the way it is then you'll know what to do when it's not perfect you know all right we talk about takedowns and center of

gravity is an axis and all the rest of it but let's let's sort of move on to another subject um punches yes so punches are actually really interesting thing first thing that a lot of people look at when they look at a punch is like oh you know like how much force was behind your punch. And it's not even that. There's something really weird about punches. Because if you look at the total force of a punch, it's not that big. So if you wanted to look at the total force of a push, like if I just pushed you, way more than a punch. So are you saying it's better to get a push in than a punch in?

Well, it all comes down to what are you trying to do? What are you trying to accomplish with this punch? So there's really two sort of extremes you can put into a punch. And one is try and put as much of your body weight as possible behind it. Try to use as much of your muscles as you can once contact has been made to get as much push. And that will knock your opponent back. It can force the wind out of your opponent.

If you've actually hit the head far away from the center of rotation, you can get the head rotating and maybe get a KO. But that's one thing you can do with a punch. But another is you can try and cause pain. You can try and cause localized tissue damage, something like that. you know localized tissue damage something like that and in that case um really what you need to do instead of trying to just get a lot of push out of your punch is try and get a whole lot of uh let's say snap into it is there a different technique to punching because when you talk about punching you immediately think of boxing classic boxing, in the ring. Yeah. As opposed to the way in any of your eight martial arts you are taught differently in terms of punching as a technique.

Yeah, so there's actually lots of different ways to punch. And some take a little more of one of those sides. So traditional boxing punches tend to go a little more along the throw your weight into it side. Uh, and, and the reason for that is, is we actually have boxing gloves and that does two things. It slows down the arm speed by, um, I tested it myself and on myself, it slowed down my arm speed about 30%. Wow. So that's, you know, if you're just throwing punches with your own hand, that's how much slower it goes.

But the other piece of that is boxing gloves actually absorb the energy of impact, which is local to the area that you're hitting. energy of impact, which is local to the area that you're hitting. So if you hit someone with a boxing glove, it will do less localized structural damage. So you're not going to cause as much bruising. You're not going to break as many bones. You're not going to cause any cuts. I mean, it's there to kind of protect you from being beat to death. You know, the gloves, right? Well, no, it's there to protect the hands from broken bones and the face from superficial injuries. But the types of injuries that would actually kill you, it does not protect against.

Oh, OK. OK. Good to know. Good to know. That's, by the way, Jason, that's why I don't box. What happens, Jason, that's why I don't box. There you go. What happens, Jason, if I punch from, say, a central position in my chest and punch forward using my elbow as it is as a hinge?

Yeah, a traditional jab. Yeah, or do when I rotate, and I've just hit the mic, that's the sound engineer hates me now. If I rotate as i punch what sort of difference what are am i increasing or decreasing force while i while i throw that punch and rotate yeah so so there's actually uh it's really interesting if you look at all the debates over different techniques and stuff um the the style of punching where you're sort of punching from your shoulder and rotating your whole body into the punch is something that is relatively modern

and I believe is associated more with boxing gloves than anything else. So we've got boxing gloves that can protect the hands. than anything else. So we've got boxing gloves that can protect the hand. So all of a sudden you can put way more force behind punches and then you could before without, you know, destroying your own fists. So now we start putting our whole body weight behind it as we punch. But if you go back, like, um, I think if you read Jack Dempsey's book, All right. The name of the book escapes me. I'm sorry. But he actually trained or learned before a lot of that came to be developed. And he actually recommends a quick, straight left punch with a vertical fist that's much more like what you were just describing. Yeah, nobody fights

like that anymore. That's like old-timey boxing. In order to fight like that, you have to have a handlebar mustache. But it obviously has an effective reason for being used.

But what I'm saying is I think the gear has a lot of sway into how that style changed over time there's there's other styles that that had the same sorts of punches before so traditional kung-fu Wing Chun both have that from the center vertical fist punch. But, you know, other styles, and it's tough because Western boxing did have a strong influence. Listen, we've got to take a break, right, Gary?

We do, and Chuck's thinking about who he wants to knock out first. He's going to draw up a list during the break. I am putting that list together right now. Going to do a whole lot of flicking and rotating and yeah, at least thinking about it. Who am I kidding? I'm not hitting anybody.

No, he's not. Right, we're going to take that break. Jason Thelkin, fabulous to have him on and don't forget, author of Fight Like a Physicist. Yes, please go check that book out. It is splendid. It covers an awful lot of subject matter. We are going to take a break.

And when we come back, our good friend Professor Eric Goff from Lynchburg College in Virginia will be our next expert on martial arts. Stick around. We'll be back shortly. Welcome back. I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Knight. And this, of course, is still Playing With Science.

Yesterday we are talking martial arts and the physics therein. And joining us now is our very good friend, Professor Eric Goff, Professor of Physics at Lynchburg College, Virginia, author of gold medal physics, the science of sports, and not just a man with a plan, but a man with a book coming out next year. That'll be 2018. The science behind Krav Maga, which if I'm not mistaken, professor, is the hand to hand martial arts of the Israeli military, is it not? That's right. The Israeli defense forces employ this, and it's becoming a much more popular sport here in the U.S. You're seeing a lot of billboards going up for Krav

Maga instruction these days. Well, what is it? I mean, it sounds like, I got to tell you, when you talk about the martial arts, you got some cool names out there, okay? You got your judo, You got some cool names out there, okay? You got your judo, all right? Your aikido. Your aikido, okay, that sounds cool. Your jiu-jitsu, which sounds very dangerous. Even karate, which is like, oh, I know what I'm getting into. But then you say krav maga, and it sounds like...

You're thinking it's food again, aren't you? Yeah, I'm like, krav Maga. Mmm, delicious. You know what? I had the best Krav Maga the other night, I've got to tell you. It was unbelievable. I'm telling you, the outside was crispy, the inside was tender. It was the best Krav Maga I've ever had. My stomach's already rumbling.

Behave yourself. All right, so what is Krav Maga? Firstly, Professor, welcome back to Playing With Science. and please put this man in his place thank you well well if Chuck had had good Krav Maga the other night his face would look a lot different all right all right professor way to go nicely done my friend so is it is, flicks, all the sort of flashy stuff, or is this more hand-to-hand, let's sort of end up wrestling, or is it a combination of a lot of different martial arts? Is it eye gouging and like rip your throat out stuff?

It's got some of that in there. I've studied karate myself. I'm a first-degree black belt, and I really enjoy karate, but it has a lot of elegant katas and movements. But Krav Maga is a much more realistic fighting system. So I think I'd be more comfortable knowing a little bit more Krav Maga than karate if I were on a dark sidewalk somewhere and had to fight somebody. I'm guessing that the good professor never has an issue with pupils. Yeah.

He's in a lecture. I've got to tell you, I'm sure there's a great deal of discipline in the professor's class. So Krav Maga is basically a street fighting style then, huh? It is. I mean, you've got some Aikido in there. You've got some boxing, wrestling, some karate. I mean, you've got an amalgam of all kinds of different systems. And it's an ever-evolving system.

It employs whatever works well, and it changes techniques as new ways to perform them come along. If we looked at it from a point of view of physics, what would be the best way to do exactly what Chuck's just said, neutralize the opponent in super quick time? So typically somebody might be swinging a punch. They could have a knife. We practice gun to the head. We practice all kinds of different scenarios.

And the idea is to get out of a danger zone very quickly. So get the gun away from your head. Get the knife away from you. And sometimes all it takes is a simple deflection or a parry and you move in close. This is close quarters fighting. So you want to get into the opponent's space, administer defensive tactics very quickly, combatives very quickly, and then hopefully be able to evacuate the danger zone without continuing the attack. So from a physics standpoint, what is the most powerful human action that you can take against an opponent? From a physics standpoint, where can you apply the most force to create a striking blow that will render your opponent neutralized?

Good question. Well, sometimes the best thing you can do is just get out of the way. I mean, if somebody's charging you or coming at you with a knife or something, if you could just barely parry the object or the person, sometimes the goal is to just disrupt their balance. So you want to just get the person offset a little bit from balance, and then you go in very quickly. If you're in close, take advantage of what creates the most amount of torque and swinging something very quickly. So an elbow might be a much easier thing to swing in close than trying to swing like a hammer fist or some other object where you've got more mass farther away from you. So the idea is when they're in close, try to do things very quickly, short-range techniques, and then get out of the way.

That's very much like a keto. and then get out of the way. That's very much like Aikido. So, you know, using your knees and your elbows and your shins in close as bludgeoning objects. Yeah, so we also use, and we do some Aikido techniques with sticks as well. Disarming with sticks, offensive approaches with sticks, anything that's laying around that can be used as a weapon is an option. Go back to the point where you said if someone was charging you with a knife, a stick or whatever it was.

So if I get this right, you are going to use their asset, which is their speed towards you, as a weakness. So this is art of war. The strength of an opponent is their weakness. Yeah, so exactly. That's what I've in my mind. Yeah, so exactly. That's what I've in my mind. I'm seeing you wait and wait, having practiced this taught a circle is going to beat a straight line and a straight line is going to beat a circle. So if we can rotate out of the way on a linear attack, then the person's momentum is moving in a direction away from us. And all we have to do is a very quick, you know, punch from the side or a kick or something that can disrupt that person's balance. Go in very quickly for another set of combatives and then get out of the way is there a particular angle at which a person will lose their balance or

is that down to the shape and the actual center of mass and center of gravity of each individual we just need to get the center of mass over a pivot point so it's idea is, I mean, very simple demo you can do is just stand against a wall with your back against a wall, lift your leg out, and you're inevitably going to fall forward. You cannot lift your leg up and stay upright against that wall because your center mass is moving forward over your foot. So the idea is if somebody is attacking you, if you can get their body manipulated in a certain way where you get the center mass over a foot, the chances of them falling are going to go up precipitously. I wonder how many people listening to this are actually now making a move towards the wall to see if they can actually lift their leg up without falling forward. Good luck. up without falling forward.

Good luck. And is it permissible in Krav Maga or any other sport, not sport, but martial arts, when you do put your opponent off balance, is it okay to say ole and allow them to go by? I'm sure, but you better be very good at what you're doing because they're going to come back. Oh, yeah. Your backside's going to take a size 10 to it for sure. If we move away from Krav Maga, you've worked on an article for The Ring magazine on boxing?

Yeah, we've looked at different punch techniques. We've looked at punch speeds. If you do just kind of a standard jab-cross combination, we also do this in Krav Maga, you can get speeds close to 20 miles an hour with these jabs and crosses. Wow. And one thing to keep in mind when you're punching someone, if you extend your arm out straight, And just if you extend your arm out straight, when your arm reaches its full straight extension, your fist is moving at zero miles an hour. If it wasn't, it would keep moving and your arm would stretch.

So the maximum speed of your punch is going to be about halfway into that extended arm. Gotcha. So is it better to be closer and hit somebody halfway through a punch than to hit them at the end of a punch? Absolutely. Your elbow is going to be bent about 90 degrees or so when your fist is moving at its maximum speed. And then as the fist extends, your fist has, or the arm extends, the fist has to slow down to zero when you get to a fully extended arm so you have this rising speed and then you know going back down when the arm is extended so the most damage on the punch is going to be when the the elbows bend oh so when i look at the biomechanics of my shoulder my elbow my fist if we're going to call it that. My shoulder's not built for kind of rotating around the outside.

It's more upwards in a vertical upwards and downwards and my elbow is a hinge. So how do we utilize the way we're constructed to the most effect if we are to throw punches? Well, the most effective way is to not just use your arm and shoulder. You really want to engage your core. This kinetic linking that we talk about where you're starting from the feet, you're going to start rotating your body into the punch. So your entire torso is creating a rotation. So you've got a lot of stored energy that you're going to convert to kinetic energy as through that rotation. So you really want to be rotating your trunk so that you are using, it's almost like a golf swing, huh?

Yes. The same with a throwing action, a golf swing. We're getting the same with the rotation for a kick in martial arts. The same thing applies. You're maximizing the energy. Is that right, Professor, by incorporating rotation? That's right. And when you have a like for

example a side kick you know we also use side kicks front kicks back kicks and krav maga as well as karate uh the idea is you're going to cock your leg for a kick so you're going to store a bunch of energy like a spring in your leg when you've got your leg cocked and then you release that energy as you're kicking and you're going to rotate your hips at the same time so you're trying to get as much energy released during the the kick or the punch as you can when i've spoken to boxers and to people who practice martial arts they said some guys punch harder than others and it's not the big muscly guys that you you'd think would have the hardest punches. Quite often, it's the little guys with not a lot of bulk, but they punch so hard.

Is that down to rotation, or is it something else that they're employing? A lot of it's rotation. I mean, keep in mind your kinetic energy grows like the square of your speed and only the first power of your mass. So if you can get a lot of extra speed going in that punch, somebody's going to feel that a little bit more than kind of a lumbering, bigger mass fist coming at you. Wow. So really, it's more about the speed and the rotation than it is about, oh'm a big strong guy sure i mean you really want to get hit with that speed i mean when these punches are coming at you at 15 to 20 miles an hour when you're getting hit uh you're gonna feel it i have a friend he's got a an older guy who's

there's nothing of him and he just turns around and, this guy can punch so hard, it's ridiculous. Wow. And you're looking at him thinking, he couldn't punch his way out of a wet paper bag. Yeah, when the martial arts expert says this guy can punch, you're thinking, okay. Right. Okay, thank you to Professor Eric Goff. We are going to take a break. We'll have more on martial arts when we get back. So stick around.

It'll be kick-ass. Welcome back. I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. And this, of course, you already know, but I'll tell you anyway, is Playing With Science. Today, it's all about martial arts. Yes. Right, and joining us, our very good friend,

Professor Eric Goff from Lynchburg College in Virginia, the author of Gold Medal Physics and a man with a book about to come out sometime in 2018 called The Science Behind Krav Maga. Krav Maga. Krav Maga. Krav Maga. Is there anything that you've brought forward in that book that you would care to share with us right now? Sure. So at the end of the year, I'm going to be submitting Warrior Krav Maga Science to my publisher. And hopefully next year we'll see this out on the shelves. And I've taken a lot of pictures.

I train at Forest Super Kicks here in Virginia, in Forest, Virginia. My instructor, Clifton Abercrombie, has been very helpful to help me with a lot of filming. Wait a minute, Professor. Did you say that your dojo is named Super Kicks? It is because we also do karate there as well. Okay. Now, listen. I'm saying this because I'm a couple, I'm about a thousand

miles away from you. That's the dumbest name for a dojo I ever heard in my life. Super kicks. Sounds like you're not going to forget it, are you? Okay. You're right about that. Cause it sounds like it should be in a mall. It's cutting hair or something. I'm joking. You've so set yourself up for trouble. No, listen, professor, let me just say this. Those are jokes, and I am sorry. Now that I know you're a first-degree black belt. No, no, I don't mind the humor, but I don't mind advertising his facility because my instructor, Mr. Abercrombie, is incredible. And what he's done with me with this book is to help me film a lot of the techniques that are

going to appear in the book to be described with using physics professor your instructor when you started to discuss things with him about martial arts about Krav Maga did you get the feeling this guy had the physics aspect of it covered already or he just learned because he was into martial arts well the way i describe it in the book is i think people like that who've been training for years in these systems have an intuitive physics yes and i don't even care if the the vocabulary is not there or the mathematics isn't there there's an there's an intuitive understanding that's developed over many years of training for certain techniques that work. So he may not be able to give me all the nice physics for why something's working, but as he starts explaining a technique to me, I start putting the physics

together in my head based on what he's telling me. So what I'm trying to do is put into the book what an instructor would tell you for something working and then put the physics language with it so that somebody who's got kind of a science interest will at least be able to read it and say, oh, I see why that's working. That's great. So what you're really doing is translating the language of fighting or martial arts into physics. That's right. And, you know, physics is the basis for all the sciences. So, I mean, it's in everything we do. And it's certainly in Krav Maga. So it's mechanical physics. And do we now realize that physics professors make better martial artists?

Not necessarily. I mean, we have a lot of things we have to do besides training, so we don't have that time in the gym that's going to help us have our bodies be weapons of mass destruction. Cool. Well, I still wouldn't want to mess with you, by the way. I want you on my side is what I'm saying. So next time we go drinking, I'm picking a fight, and then I'm calling on you. Okay. Well, I'm not a huge fan of fighting personally but i hope to learn something i mean i think the best thing to do professor is avoid the drinking with chuck to begin with once again we're words of wisdom

okay eric um sort of pop culture give me the mixed martial arts out of all is there a hierarchy to which one is the best which one is the most effective um i don't know that i would rank them that way i think each one has its own benefits uh each one emphasizes certain skills over others krav maga is a it's an amalgam of many systems. So it borrows from boxing and wrestling and Aikido, Judo, Karate. It doesn't mind stealing from other systems to have a great amalgam of whatever works. So when you look at fighting just in general, who is superior in terms of fighter? Is it the style? Some people say Muhammad Ali, greatest fighter of all time. But of course, he's the greatest boxer of all time.

Who, in your mind, is the greatest fighter of all time? Oh, good grief. Well, I would probably feel more comfortable walking down an alley with one of the MMA guys over a boxer. I think those guys are going to be much more conditioned for street fighting. I mean, Mayweather was clearly a better boxer in the ring, but I think if they had gone an MMA style, I think McGregor would have murdered him. Oh, he would have murdered him. Literally, he beat, well, you can't be up on charges because you murdered him in the ring. But right now, quite frankly, people would be like,

what a shame we lost Floyd Mayweather. And when I say people, I mean four people would say that because that's about the only people that would say that. You are cruel. I am. Professor, out of the different fighting styles, which one, to your mind, as a physicist, applies the most science? Hmm, great question.

What is the most physics of fighting? Well, given that I don't think there's really anything that science can't touch, describe, or help you understand, I would say that science is going to help you with all of them. I mean, certainly physics is the most fundamental science. So when we're looking at all the martial arts systems, whether you're looking at elegant katas and karate, you're looking at the street fighting of Krav Maga. I mean, physics is going to help you understand all of those movements. Okay, let's talk about the man. You can't do a show on martial arts and not mention this man. One man. Mr. Bruce Lee.

Yes. Professor, your thoughts. Your thoughts on Mr. Bruce Lee, please. That was my Bruce Lee. Did you like it? No. Okay. He was certainly small in stature, almost no body fat to look at him very very fast so he

had excellent technique he could hit very hard uh his famous punch with one inch off the person's chest yes i mean those types of things require a great deal of skill and the the skill and the technique is going to be more important than just brute strength. Now, let me ask you this, because you brought up the two inch or the one inch punch, which he's famous for. And you see him just like an inch away from somebody's chest, bang, hits them, and then they fly back and fall down into a chair. First of all, is that showmanship? Is that physics? How does that happen if it is physics? Well, he's going to get a great deal of kinetic linking starting down at the feet. I mean, he's going to be able to get a little bit of a push off the floor, turn the hips, turn the torso, get energy out of the legs, get it out of the rotating back. I mean, all of these things are

going to come into play when that fist travels that one inch for the hit i mean it's it's going to be moving rather quickly even in that one inch of gap professor it's been a pleasure um best of luck with the new book when it comes out the science behind krav maga and thank you for being on the show once again great to be here it's a lot of fun always a pleasure absolutely A judo, a chop chop chop. Well, that's our show, Chuck. That's it. And I somehow am very bruised. Yep. We covered a lot of bases. Yeah. I'll be honest with you, Krav Maga sounds

an awfully interesting sport. I love it. And we learned not to mess with the professor because he has black belts, plural. Who knew that? This guy's dangerous. Like, you know what I mean? He'll beat your ass and then write an equation of how he did it. That's insane.

Isn't it just? Right, that's playing with science for you. I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. We look forward to your company in the future.