Why they break their hands
The evolution of sports martial arts
Boxing History
Let’s go back a hundred years. Way back then, bare-knuckled boxing was the norm. This is when you see a guy, standing there wearing a handlebar moustache that you could hang coffee cups off of, with his hands extended in front of him, elbows down.
Now while both the stance and mustache look silly by today’s standard, let me point out that this was called “London rules fighting.” That’s a joke because the stuff was so “no rules” that it made the UFC look like a Teletubbies show. There was no “gentleman’s agreement,” grappling, gouging, fishhooking, headbutting, purring (grinding a shod foot down the other guy’s shin, trying to break his foot to boot) were the norm. In fact, that “goofy stance” excelled at keeping people from closing, grappling and doing all those nasty-nasties to your precious body.
Sound ugly? That’s just the beginning. Here’s where it gets butt ugly. There were no round limits or decisions. Victory was determined by either knockout or the other guy being so punch drunk he couldn’t continue. No points, no decision… incapacitation. In other words, you won by beating the other dude senseless. And sometimes the suckers didn’t fold as quickly and easily as you might hope. This is why John Sullivan’s longest bout went for 72 rounds. The longest fight on record went 114. That, by the way, means all day! It was called because of sunset and declared a draw. See why I say London rules makes UFC look warm and fuzzy? People often did die.
The reason for changes in how boxers hit is very simple. Gloves. When gloves were introduced, boxing went down a totally different evolutionary line. The original purpose of gloves was to protect the participants. (This is really ironic because, while they limited gouging, hooking and other barehanded nasties, in the correct range, the extra weight of the gloves allow you to actually hit harder – provided you hit in a very specific way.) Along with this equipment many new rules and bans were also introduced to further increase the safety of the fighters.
But the real sweetheart was the ban on clinching and grappling. It was no longer necessary to keep the guy away because the ref would do it for you. This is one of the two major reasons the boxing guard came “in” to its modern position. There was no more need for arms to stick way out yonder to keep the other dude back.
The other big reason, guards came in was that position worked better with the new way of hitting.
A very specific way of hitting evolved from wearing gloves. When you are swinging your arms around with that extra weight perched on your mitts, you discover something real quick. It is the same thing you learn when you pick up a real sword, instead of one of those tinfoil wu shu thingies or a light dowel. And that is, even though you have a shorter time to fight, those dammed gloves get heavy.
With the extra weight of gloves on the end of your arms, it was easier to hit from a circular motion of your hips. You literally sling your weighted fist out from your body. Your hips and torso lead the motion with a twist. Once your arm is moving from body motion, you then rocket out your fist. This is where the idea of “the correct way to punch is from the hips” came from.
If you want to keep from exhausting yourself, you use your entire body, not just your arms. This applies to both gloves and weapons. Putting it into super simple terms: Move your ass!!! You hit with your entire bodyweight not just arm strength. That is correct boxing punching.
The thing is, that is a circular action.
That means it needs to be a close-range, circular hit. While there is a way to generate straight force from a circular motion, it requires some very specific body positioning, which a boxer will do. However, you have to know about it, because if you try to ape that kind of punching without understanding the body positioning, you end up actually losing power.
Along with the gloves came all sorts of other things to civilize the game, like limited rounds and point decisions. That meant you could win a bout by hitting the guy more times in a limited amount of time, not necessarily beating him unconscious like the old days. This often made speed more important than power. This is doubly true with extremely light gloves, in fact, the lighter the gloves the faster the punches.
Broken Hands
If you look at the way those old-timers hit, it was designed to protect their hands. And yes, while hands did break, they were not as common as you might think. Whereas injury to your opponent was real common. So here are these guys beating the hell out of each other for 30 to 40 rounds with minimal damage to their unprotected hands. That should tell you something about how they punched.
Conversely, think about this for a second. How many times have you heard of a modern boxer hitting someone outside the ring and breaking his hand? How about a martial artist?
If you look at it superficially, it is easy to dismiss these injuries as “he just hit wrong.” But something doesn’t gel with that answer. So if instead of accepting that answer at face value, you keep on looking into the problem, a far more accurate answer presents itself. How the guy was trained to hit has changed! People are hitting differently!
Face it, how people hit has to have changed. I seriously doubt that a professional boxer forgot years of training on how to hit because he was both a little drunk and ****ed off when he popped the dude. In the same vein, I also seriously doubt that a black belt – even from a belt factory – just spaces out how to hit. Injuries must arise from a different source.not that he did it wrong. (Don’t get me started about instructors who blame their ****ty techniques not working on the student doing it wrong…grrrrr!).
This brings us back to changes in training.
The cost of modern sports equipment was that you have to hit in a very specific way and be wearing special equipment. Try to hit someone like that without these two conditions and viola! a broken hand. And soooooo many people have found this out over the years when they threw a boxing or karate punch at someone’s head without gloves.
People have blindly accepted the changes in boxing as the way it has always been when it comes to hitting, or they contend that the new way of hitting is “superior.” This ignorance of changes especially applies to people from outside boxing, a.k.a. martial artists. Many of whom study styles that have long since adopted these changes – usually in the pursuit of safety in tournaments. Thing is while everybody is so busy going on about lineage and tradition, they sort of forget to mention these little insignificant issues.
That’s if you consider robbing you of your punching power insignificant.
