The Happeh Pseudoscientific Method, part Ad Nauseum.

Martial Arts Articles Punching Bag
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After almost a decade on the internet, It is my firm believe that there is a plan to spread lies about the practice of Kung Fu. It is my belief that this article is part of that plan.

Sir. You arrogance is breathtaking. So many of your statements are flat out wrong, that you should be ashamed to have written such a piece. As I cannot quote your article, I will point out a few of the more egregious errors in your piece.

“[SIZE=6][SIZE=2]my teachers didn’t really have a clue what science was all about.”

This sentence is typical “young’un”. The young person thinks they know more than the old people. It is my position that the remainder of this article demonstrates that the writer is the person who does not know anything.

“[/SIZE][/SIZE][SIZE=6][SIZE=2]The justification for a stupid looking move should not be ‘scientific’ or based on some twisted logic of fighting (‘always attack down the centreline’)”

First off some advice. If you expect people to respect you and your opinions, don’t call things “stupid looking moves”. Right off the bat the reader knows you have negative emotions for your subject that are mostly likely biasing all of your statements.

Could you please explain why you, a child of the modern age, feel that “centerline theory is some twisted logic of fighting”. Centerline theory was developed by people who lived in a kung fu atmosphere back in the day. You are a child that lives in an age of cars, sitting in front of a TV, and guns. Why do you feel your opinion of centerline theory, an opinion based on a few years of experience maybe, has more validity than the opinion of much older men with years of kung fu experience, living in a world where kung fu was constantly used for self defense?

[/SIZE][/SIZE] "As an example of how bad I eventually discovered the understanding of my instructors was - the older instructors really believed that if you had the correct stance, you would not experience a reactionary force when blocking/punching your opponent. If you have any scientific education, you should know this is a gross distortion of reality and is basically really really wrong"
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Sir. This is so incredibly wrong that it completely destroys your credibility and makes the rest of your article worthless. Your opinion is meaningless because this point is so wrong.

Sir. You claim to be studying to be a scientist. Could you please state your age, how many years of schooling you have, what your major is, what classes you have taken that you feel apply to this subject, and the grades you recieved these classes.

Sir. I believe the answer to the above questions will reveal you are a young 20 something who is only starting an education. With your partial education, you are jumping to conclusions you are not qualified to make. Your education is only beginning, which means you are being quite audacious in citing it as a reason for people to accept what you say.

AH HA! And then after that statement about how the instructors are wrong, you never explain why. That is because you can’t explain why they are wrong can you?

This cements my belief this is another article meant to spread lies about real kung fu.

Sir. After the comment above, your article completely peters out, like urine changing from full pressure to a dribble as you finish urinating.

If that is all you have, you should be hiding under your bed in embarrassment at what you have written.

If you were my student, you would get an F for that paper. Maybe a D if I was feeling in a good mood. You make claims that are unsupported, you insult people and do not back it up.

This is basically BullShido hate, under a banner that says “scientific discussion”

Sir. If you can eloquently and intelligently express yourself, I will either take you and your article apart, or I will correct you and your article.

En Garde!
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Answer all of these questions, Jalon.

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HiThere: Sir Isaac Newton and his Laws would like a word with you.

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Could you please explain why you, a child of the modern age, feel that “centerline theory is some twisted logic of fighting”.

It fails repeatedly when tested in controlled, but real, combat.

Centerline theory was developed by people who lived in a kung fu atmosphere back in the day.

Everything you criticize the OP’s article for directly applies to YOU referring to something as nebulous, unscientific and unhistorical as a “kung fu atmosphere.” You, sir, are a joke.

You are a child that lives in an age of cars, sitting in front of a TV, and guns.

Unless you actually traveled to the future from medieval China, SO ARE YOU.

Why do you feel your opinion of centerline theory, an opinion based on a few years of experience maybe, has more validity than the opinion of much older men with years of kung fu experience, living in a world where kung fu was constantly used for self defense?

Because we have tons of video evidence of centerline theory FAILING. And, many of us actually fight and know what it takes to actually fight. Centerline theory is not it.

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I believe that is because apples and oranges are being compared. Part of the discipline of kung fu is living a long and healthy life. A kung fu person will do everything in their life, including fighting, in a particular way that follows the natural way the human body is constructed and behaves. By following the natural way the human body is constructed and behaves, the strain of all of the activities they engage in on the body is minimized, which lengthens their life span.

In my opinion, western people do not have a deep level understanding of the human body. Because of this, western people, in the minds of kung fu people, are crazy. They are crazy because they will do things in a fight that will hurt themselves. A westerner would throw a punch that, according to how the human body is constructed and behaves, will hurt his own heart, liver, spleen, etc. That is crazy. Why would anyone do something that would hurt themselves?

A kung fu man would avoid fighting one of these “crazy” people because they are willing to do crazy things to win the fight. Instead of following the natural flow of the human body in a fight, the “crazy” person will purposefully do something that might cut years off of their own lives, just to win the fight.

You don’t choose to fight crazy people. If you have to fight a crazy person, you would end it as soon as possible. You would not put on a show for a crowd to judge whether or not they liked what you did.

EDIT: I completely ignored the fact that centerline theory was developed to fight people who used another style of fighting that employs a different theory. One reason that you see Wing Chun people having trouble in fights, is because boxers for instance, do not fight using the theory that is used by the people, that centerline theory is designed to counter.

My Wing Chun instructor admitted that boxers gave Wing Chun people trouble. Boxing is a good counter to a Wing Chun fighter. The Wing Chun fighter has to be skilled to deal with the boxer.

Because this is an article, not a forum thread, and to show respect to the author, I would like to keep this conversation on topic. Could you please be more explicit as do what you are saying to me, and refrain from any name calling.

A theory is a theory. Whether a theory is correct or not has no bearing on whether or not a person can effectively implement the theory. Centerline Theory is a valid theory that does make sense within the framework that the Wing Chun people specify for it.

If you disagree with Centerline Theory, could you please say what it is you disagree with, in a clear and understandable way? When you say that a fight proves the theory is worthless, that does not count. You need to explain what flaws the theory itself has, that explains why it does not work in real life.

In respect to the author of this article, and the scholarly nature of the article section, please try to write in an emotionless and factual way.

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HiThere: You appear to have a great talent for throwing red herrings into your forum replies. The relative craziness of West versus East, which I sincerely doubt you are in any state to judge, is irrelevant to the article. The development of centreline theory and what, if anything, it was intended to counter is irrelevant to the article (incidentally, if you intend to ignore a subject, don’t mention it). You then actually have the gall to attempt to reprimand someone else for straying off topic.
The article states quite clearly and accurately that science is a method of describing something (or more poetically, that “Science is a tool to attack the unknown.” An excellent phrase).
That something is described using science does not make it better or more efficient. That is the nub of the problem as far as the specific example of Wing Chun is concerned. The fact that it is commonly called a scientific system is pointless, and often misleading due to the fact that many instructors (and not just of Wing Chun, but in general) have a limited knowledge of hard science. And why should they have such knowledge? Most of their skill has been hard won through trial and error and repetition. The basis of the scientific method, in fact.
By the way, before you ask, I’m 29, have trained on and off since I was 8 (I started in TKD, but everyone has to start somewhere), and I have a university degree in biochemistry. I’ve shown you mine, you show me yours.

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It is not irrelevant. People wonder why kung fu fighters might not fight western style fighters. If the kung fu figher thinks the western fighter is mentally unbalanced, that would be one reason he might refuse to fight.

What can you possibly mean? The author of the article explicitly uses Wing Chun as an example in the article. The picture with the article is of two men demonstrating Wing Chun. Centerline Theory is associated with Wing Chun, so of course it is relevant to this discussion. Here is the sentence from the author’s article.

"[SIZE=6][SIZE=2]attacking along the centreline, taking the shorter path to the target, "

The author brings up the centerline, which is part of centerline theory, which means any comments on centerline theory are connected to this discussion.
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Your statement is so obvious I do not understand why you make it. Unless you are having trouble expressing yourself accurately. I think you mean to say that “science does not make a person a better fighter”.

The two ideas are completely different. Does understanding the science of a fighting system make a person a better fighter? That depends on the person. Is understanding the science of the fighting system a worthwhile endeavor on it’s own? That too depends on the person.

It is not pointless. To the intelligent person, knowing that a fighting system is based on a scientific theory that obeys the laws of physics can be more interesting and demands more respect, than training a fighting style that is just a mish mash of methods slapped together by someone who has no understanding why the methods work.

It is mind boggling to me that you can have a 4 year college degree, and have the attitude you do. You know through experience that a college thinks that real knowledge of a subject takes 6 months during a semester to gain. But here at BullShido, you feel that a few posts that take 5 or 10 minutes to read are enough to gain a thorough understanding of what is being said, and to make a reasoned and informed judgement of what has been said.

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The purpose in understanding a theory, is that a person who understands a theory can figure out everything by themselves. A person who does not understand theory, must be told everything. Understanding science and theories is about possiblities. The mind is filled with information that can be put to many different unknown and unpredictable uses.

I will try to demonstrate one way trigonometry could be used by a fighter below.

Trigonometry is a discipline that is involved with the properties of of triangles. One of the main uses of Trigonometry is in checking the alignment of things. It is very easy to check the alignment of a Triangle, because a Triangle only has 3 sides. A simple visual inspection can tell a person if something is aligned or not.

The picture below shows 3 triangles.

The triangle in the middle looks “right”, while the other two triangles look “wrong”. The sides of the middle triangle are the same, so when the meet in a point, that point is in the center of the base of the triangle. The other two triangles have uneven sides, which puts their meeting point to one side or the other of the center of the base of the triangle.

The discipline of engineering uses some of the information from the discipline of trigonometry, to analyze and explain what is going on in a system of physical forces. According to engineering, something is more efficient when it is aligned properly. When something is misaligned, the forces in the physical system do not go where they should, resulting in lower efficiency.

The human body is a system of physical forces. So engineering can be used to explain anything the human body does. Since engineering uses trigonometry to solve engineering problems, triangles must apply to the human body.

Triangles obviously apply to the human body. There are triangles all over the human body. So if you are a fighter, and you want to be the strongest you can be, then according to engineering, you want all of the triangles in your body to be aligned as they are designed to be aligned.

That is a lot of talking. How can that information be used in a simple way to help a fighter? Very easily.

The arms of a human being form a triangle with the torso as shown below.

According to what was said above, the arms in the picture above are good arms. Both arms look equal length, and they both meet in the center of the body. According to engineering, the person with arms like the ones above would be able to efficiently deliver the majority of his power to the peak of the triangle.

Here is the next picture.

In the picture above, the arms have shifted. The left arm looks like it is almost sticking straight out, with the right arm reaching way over to the left. The point of the triangle is over on the left side of the body.

Common sense should tell you that there is something wrong here. Common sense should tell that if the left arm punches to the peak of the triangle, it will be a relatively strong punch. But if the right arm punches, it will be a weak punch, because the right arm is reaching way over to the left side of the body to punch. The right arm loses power traveling all the way over to the left side of the body.

If your common sense does not tell you the picture above means that the left arm will punch stronger to the peak of the triangle than the right arm, then engineering will. Solving the physical system represented by the arms in the picture above using engineering, would prove that one arm could strike the peak of the triangle stronger than the other arm could.

The next picture shows the arms shifted the other way.

The right arm is almost sticking straight out, with the left arm reaching across the body to reach the peak of the triangle. Everything said about the other picture applies to this picture. The right arm can strike the peak of the triangle with more force than the left arm, because the left arm loses efficiency by traveling across the torso to reach the peak of the pyramid.

The possibilities and implications of what has been written above are many. If all of that information above is true, how could a fighter put it to use tomorrow? So as not to overwhelm people, let’s try to stay simple.

Any fighter can stand up straight and put their arms out in front of themselves to form a triangle. The fighter should allow their arms to settle into what feels like a natural position.

Now look at where the peak of the triangle formed by your arms is. Is the peak of your triangle in the center of your body? If it is, then your body is mostly balanced and even from side to side. You should be able to punch with equal efficiency with either the left or right arm.

What if your triangle is to the right or the left? That means your body is unbalanced. One side of your body is probably stronger than the other, and one side of your body is obviously out of alignment, since that arm can no longer go in the center of the body.

Since engineering says the maximum power is delivered through something that is aligned, by doing this simple exercise that takes 5 minutes, you will find out if your arms are in the center of your body and you are delivering maximum power with both hands equally, or if your arms are not in the center of your body, you will find out which one of your arms is stronger than the other, and which one is not properly aligned.

Then if you cared, you could start working on realigning your body so that both arms were in the center of your body, so both arms were equally strong.

That is all an oversimplified, much to short, poorly worded example of one way in which Trigonometry can be useful to a fighter. Since Trigonometry has been proven to be useful to the fighter, it seems reasonable that understanding other science that applies to how the human body works and how fighting systems work, would also be useful to the thinking fighter.

To the fighter who does not want to think, Trigonometry and Science are useless in improving their fighting ability.

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HiThere = stupidity

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I’ve never seen anyone make so much sense…in so short a post.

Pushups done in honor of El Macho

I love how Jalon is providing an EXCELLENT example of what the article discusses. Jalon is now a “case-in-point.”

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waste of space

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Because a punch is more than just your arm. At least a proper punch with any actualy power is. It is concerted effort of your arm, chest, hips, and legs. Yes, if we threw shitty slap punches like in _ing _un then your theory would hold out that centerline punches are the best. However, even you admit that boxing is far superior in its punches because it doesn’t rely on the stupidity of centerline attacks.

BTW, would you mind telling me how “A westerner would throw a punch that, according to how the human body is constructed and behaves, will hurt his own heart, liver, spleen, etc.” without the mystical unproven chi flow BS that I KNOW you will employ to explain this rank idiocy? God you are either stupid or brainwashed, although the two are not mutually exclusive.

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i’m sorry HiThere, but _ing _un is pretty much on par with intelligent design.

i know it’s hard to break out of that paradigm you have lived in for many years, and perhaps no amount of debate is going to change your mind. if that is the case, i wouldn’t even bother trying to debate over this. you’re probably a nice guy, save yourself the pain.

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if you wanted to get good at playing tennis would you theorise about it in the same way and never actually play a game of it?

have you ever actually been in a fight?

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wow, this is just awful. This is akin to using e=mc^2 to explain why muscles take power away from your kick.

I will try to demonstrate one way trigonometry could be used by a fighter below.

At first this looks legitimate, I bet you thought to yourself, “Hey I am using triangles, this means I’m practicing trigonometry.”

Triangles obviously apply to the human body. There are triangles all over the human body. So if you are a fighter, and you want to be the strongest you can be, then according to engineering, you want all of the triangles in your body to be aligned as they are designed to be aligned.

Ok. So this is actually about structural engineering because trigonometry says f&*% all about the strength of a triangle. But that is a minor error and one that you can be forgiven for.

My problem is with this sentence here:

So if you are a fighter, and you want to be the strongest you can be, then according to engineering, you want all of the triangles in your body to be aligned as they are designed to be aligned.

This would be true if the human body were a structure made out of metal with uniform thickness whose primary purpose was lying down with outstretched arms AND BEARING LOADS ON OUR GODDAMN FINGERTIPS. Which, last I checked, was not a major goal in my life.

Moving on:

You should be able to punch with equal efficiency with either the left or right arm.

Almost every great fighter in history has favored one hand over the other. Even Miyamoto Musashi, the famous duel wielding swordsman, had a more powerful left swing. The rest of your post is based on this axiom, which means I should probably stop here. But the rest of your post is also so wrong it’s hard to stop.

Solving the physical system represented by the arms in the picture above using engineering, would prove that one arm could strike the peak of the triangle stronger than the other arm could.

This is almost true. If you assume that you are not moving your hips or rotating your body (which is f&*^ing stupid) and both arms can generate the same amount of power then one arm will hit the peak of the triangle at less force than the other ALONG THE VERTICAL VECTOR. If you are talking about absolutes than the arms will hit with the same momentum. The only difference between them is the angle at which they hit the target and if you’ve ever been hit before you know that being hit on the chin at a 20 degree angle compared to straight on feels about the same. In fact I would say that the 20 degree angle feels worse.

Ok, one more and then I’ll stop, I promise.

Since engineering says the maximum power is delivered through something that is aligned…

I have no idea where what this means in regard to the human body. I asked a structural engineer at NASA what this means and she didn’t know either.

If you are referring to the way an arm should be aligned to create the greatest possible power then wouldn’t it be advantageous to include the body in that scenario as well?

I am all for science in martial arts, but so far, excluding bjj and anatomy, I’ve only seen bad science used to affirm bad technique. I would love to see someone base a martial art on scientific principles, but that someone would have to be a genius capable of incorporating all factors of fighting into equations. I’m afraid such a man has not yet been born, but when he is be sure that his brain will eclipse planets.

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The name you’re looking for is Jigoro Kano. Remember, it doesn’t have to be quantifiable to be scientific - repeatable and falsifiable goes a long way.

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Here HiThere. I revised the diagram in the picture for you.

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OH INDEED SIR

INDEED

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who the fuck let happeh out of his box ?

somebody is seriously dropping the ball.

megalef standing ovation we all agree 100%

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Quick quick! someone call a doctor!

he’s infected with elmoretheroeticalballoneyium - which is of course, t3h de4d3ly!