Understanding

They built a bridge with blue rock from the blue quarry, the bridge worked but showed signs of weakness with some cracking. The next bridge was built with pink rock from the pink quarry. This bridge was clearly much stronger. Lesson learned: pink rock makes better bridges.
Pleased with themselves and their new knowledge, they coated the blue bridge with pink paint.

It can sometimes appear that many martial artists spend too much time talking and thinking about how the mechanics of the arts work, and too little time actually doing something useful, like actually training. I am much more forgiving of martial navel-gazing (no great surprise there) and while actually training is the first priority, stopping to review, analyze, and understand once in a while is not only useful, but is and has been absolutely essential to the existence and progression of the martial arts.

In an (online) discussion with other martial arts instructors, concerning the type of pedantic technical investigation that makes up this blog, three interesting points were made that bear some, well, technical investigation. As these were informal comments on social media I wont attribute them to the respective authors.

The first point of view expressed was that this type of analysis and description-via-physics serves little or no useful purpose:

"...experience has shown me that applying such knowledge in real combat (or even 'perceived' real combat, such as free-sparring) is quite another thing".

This is a good one, I'll get back to this.

The second, related, sentiment was skepticism regarding the validity of using physics in this realm at all:

" All this science stuff may have been put about to prove it's relevance back in the 50's, but it does seem flawed....Given that we are all so incredibly different and by scientific standards, complicated, it does seem misplaced. From what I can make out, no other sport or martial art speaks of physics."

The answer to this is simply yes, yes they do. The tools of the various sports clearly get physics attention, the design of bikes, footballs, running shoes, tennis racquets etc. But also the technique of the athletes themselves are analysed to a far greater degree than in fringe sports like our martial arts.

Case in point:

 

Our physics tend to be concerned with generating and dealing with impact, and so can be harder to analyze and understand due to the necessarily short time frames, and the difficulty in accurately gauging results. But certainly we are not alone in attempting to understand what we do on a physics level.

"Given that we are all so incredibly different and by scientific standards, complicated, it does seem misplaced".

The very fact that we are all recognisably human means that we are more alike than we are different. Any model is by definition a simpler construct than the reality it mimics. We reduce complicated systems to simpler models in order to understand them, so the complexity of the human form is no hindrance, we are working with a simplified model of this form.
This modeling is something we do anyway, whether we use the language of physics or not, there is no other way to understand the world or the things in it. The language of physics simply holds us to a more precise description and reduces ambiguity.

This leads nicely to the third statement I want to address:

"I could have easily used my knowledge of physics to explain my technical ability as a low level black belt 20 years ago - and I would be right on all counts.
And I could also use the same theories to explain my current ability - and I would also be right on all counts.
It's easy to describe scientifically what makes sense to you - when you omit hypothesis, investigation and testing."

The author is essentially making the point that post-hoc explanations are of little use, since with a little ingenuity you can justify almost anything; you can build a valid physics model to explain what you have already assumed to be true.

Certainly this is something that happens quite often, so often in fact that 60% this entire blog (that's three out of a total five posts :) ) is entirely based on pointing out the fallacies that arise from such activity.
Just because you couch an explanation in the language of science, does not mean that the explanation is automatically valid. In fact, because the language of science is specifically built to avoid ambiguity, it is far easier to spot errors in such explanations.

If you do have two valid but differing explanations for the same technique, then the difference must be in the level of complexity of the models. A more detailed model (a deeper, more nuanced understanding) cannot contradict a simple model if both are valid.

For example, I would teach beginners that a yop chagi is a simple stamping motion, with the difference being that instead of stamping downwards, the stamp is delivered to the side. Most students can throw a reasonably useful yop chagi within seconds using this explanation, often on the first attempt.
That is a simple model, and any instructor will tell you that there is far more to yop chagi than stamping sideways.
But at no point in the growing complexity of a more detailed analysis of  hip use, foot position, momentum, trajectory etc, will the "stamping motion" model be contradicted, the motion will remain a stamping motion. The simple model is not wrong, but a another model might contain far more useful information.


Which is to say that, sure, you can explain your reasons for doing any old rubbish with a big bunch of physics, just like you can explain your reasons in terms of energy or chi. But if you use the vague and ambiguous language of energy and chi you'll never be wrong. Neither you nor anybody else will be able to look at your model/explanation and say "there's a mistake there, this will not work/ does not help/ does not work for the reason you think it works". An explanation like that must be taken on faith, and so does not qualify as an explanation at all.

On the other hand, mistakes and contradictions in an explanation that uses the language of physics/mechanics might be sometimes difficult to spot, but these mistakes cannot be ignored or hand-waved away.
In such a case either:

1. the explanation fails to accurately describe the motion.
2. the contradiction in the explanation accurately reflects a contradiction in the motion itself.

This is crucial. An accurate description with unambiguous language allows us to find and fix errors in technique. In the case where we already know something works, an accurate description allows us to understand why it works, and maybe how to improve it.
And sometimes, in the case where we already know something works, an accurate description will show us that we are wrong, that it doesn't work, that we have fooled ourselves through confirmation bias and other standard human failings.

At the start of this post I quoted this:

"...experience has shown me that applying such knowledge in real combat (or even 'perceived' real combat, such as free-sparring) is quite another thing".

If none of this technical detail can be applied in action then it all becomes a huge waste of time and energy.

The right place for applying technical detail is not in the fight, but in training for the fight. Impact drills and partner drills: that is where we can apply our knowledge.

If the drills are built around the knowledge and principles of the art, if the technical minutae are used to correct foot positions and striking angles and shot selection and all the other fun stuff, then the martial artist learns the feel of good technique and correct angles.

Our martial artist wont apply the knowledge in the fight, there is no time for that. He will simply do, and the doing will be based on the drills, the drills that were built on the details.