I didn't try different grips, but it would be an interesting variable to consider. Every variable that is introduced does significantly increase the length and arduousness of the investigation though, so there is a bit of a compromise that has to be reached based on the context.

​@@WushuEngineer Aye, I mostly want the info for game design reasons, though as a martial artist, I'm also intrigued. I'm curious what the difference between one handed, two-hands touching side by side, two-hands with a reasonable spread and two-hands as far apart as is practical would be on say a Hanbo staff. If its about a 50% increase based on what I'd call a reasonable spread grip. I'm curious if side by side would be a notable or negligible difference? And when they are spread further apart, will it be a small increase or a drastic increase. I think it would be 60-65% over one handed. But it could be 75% or double. I also think there would be a point at which the two hands grip spread becomes too far and it would lower the impact. Also curious how much that varies if it was done with a longer weapons. Using say a Jo, a 5ft Bo and a 6ft Bo. Would length drastically affect impact? Or would the impact difference be negligible?

Apologies if this comment is a repeat - YT did something funny when I tried to post it. Thanks for your comments and questions. I will think about revisiting this topic and addressing this formally in future with some tests. However, we are quite time-poor now due to the studies that we are currently getting into publication, as well as launching our professional training company and associated training programs. What I can do in the meantime is give you a brief and perhaps somewhat oversimplified overview of how striking works - which could go some way towards answering some of your questions. Striking can be used to achieve many different outcomes in combat, such as causing physical damage or physically manipulating an opponent (eg. knocking them to the ground). If we are purely looking at striking to cause physical damage, the dominant physical characteristic that determines striking effectiveness is kinetic energy (Ek). A skilled human striker can manipulate both variables that make up Ek: impact velocity and mass. When we talk about mass in terms of human impact, it is often referred to as apparent mass or effective mass, because it is that part of the striker’s mass that is involved in the impact. This is usually only a small percentage of their total body mass. Impact velocity can be modified as well, but in my experience, it is something that plateaus quickly because human muscle tissue has some significant limitations in terms of its contraction speed. Apparent mass, on the other hand, can be very heavily influenced by the striker’s level of experience and training intensity. By applying a raft of unique biomechanical techniques (which include creating momentary structures, bridges and stances that support very high levels of sustained force at impact), a skilled striker can significantly modify how “heavy” their striking is. However, there is most often a trade-off between impact velocity and apparent mass. So, as a basic answer to your questions, if the striker holds a staff or stick at one end with a narrow grip, it may allow them to achieve higher impact velocities but at the cost of apparent mass, because they lack a substantial structure at the point of impact and so cannot increase apparent mass very easily by applying a surge of sustained force. If the striker holds the staff or stick in a very wide grip, this can impact negatively on impact velocity because it is more closely integrated into the body, requiring the striker’s body to move more rapidly to compensate (as opposed to swinging the stick using a narrow grip). However, the striker’s ability to manipulate apparent mass at the point of impact will be much higher because of the more substantial structure that they have created. What I find is that there is a “sweet spot” for weapons, which involves optimizing structure, grip and economizing on movement to maximize kinetic energy, which involves the optimal compromise between impact velocity and apparent mass. However, optimizing kinetic energy may not be the desired outcome in some cases. A striker may opt to adjust their grip mid-attack to maximize either impact velocity (if they want a rapid strike to a vital point that doesn’t require a lot of structural commitment), or apparent mass (for example, if they wish to sweep or uproot an opponent with that momentary rapid application of force).

Overcoming isometrics is a great component to continue to practice as a boxer. The modernized Neuropotency training that we have developed contains isometrics, as well as a systematic approach to enhancing biomechanical advantage, and which incorporates advanced breath control, electronic kpi tracking, and new biofeedback methods. One of those kpi tracking devices is the Impulse Block that we developed specifically for Neuropotecy training. This enables the development of enhanced striking capability, which would be of benefit to a boxer. However, our courses are currently only running for select industries such as the military and emergency services and we haven't opened them to the general public as yet. I would recommend that you continue with the isometrics as well as conventional training, but also find a reliable way of tracking your striking parameters.

@WushuEngineer yea I use a Isomax for the tracking

True. I had to downscale it to be able to play with it.

Thanks for your question. There are pros and cons. I love Titanium, so I’m personally willing to put up with the cons. Although grade 5 Ti is very hard to begin with and it can be heat-treated to an extent, it can never compete with the edge hardness and edge retention of a classic knife steel. I have mitigated the softer edge by carbidizing it (applying a thin layer of tungsten carbide to one side of the edge). The main pros of Ti in my opinion are corrosion resistance and weight. Practically speaking, it will all but completely resist all forms of environmental corrosion and many forms of chemical corrosion. It’s also almost half the density of steel. So a volume of Ti would weigh a little over half that of a similar volume of steel. This weight reduction isn’t really obvious with small-bladed knives, but when you start working with larger bladed knives like the kukri as well as short-swords, it makes the weapons so much lighter and nimbler. I am a big fan of light, nimble weapons, so this is a big selling point for me.

@WushuEngineer cool, amd then again the tradition Kukuri s arnt that hard ether, medium carbon steel

@@YourBestNeighbor7 no it is fc 20 k axis the way it measured force and sampling frequenzy is egzacly the same as loadstar loadcell both piezoelecteic loadcell the same calinration as 1 kg = 1 kg asf 👌🏻

The franklin is a proprietary unit named after the inventor of the StrikeMate/PowerKube system. It is not an accepted scientific unit and appears to be some combination of energy and power along with some unknown modifying factors. To my knowledge, the manufacturers of the PowerKube have not provided a detailed breakdown of the unit. It cannot be converted into units of force.

@@WushuEngineer thanks alot for the elaboration!

First of all, this device is a load cell, not an accelerometer. Accelerometers measure acceleration while load cells measure force. In addition, this load cell has been independently calibrated and verified by the University of Southern Queensland and has been utilized in a number of scientific studies, some of which are published and others pending publication. It is accurate in its measurement. This result is the kind of result we would expect from an experienced and well-trained martial artist, and we have seen similar results from other martial artists who have tested their striking on this equipment. What you should bear in mind is that the impact force is spread over several bones in the striking limb. It is not all concentrated in a single bone. In addition, the load cell force plate is padded, which reduces the peak impact force experienced by the striker.

@@WushuEngineer pad, that protects the hand, is basically reducing the impact force by prolonging the time of contact. Which means that you could easily inflate or deflate the striking force by removing / adding the padding and the major real limiting factor here is the strength of bones in hand. So, the number of Newtowns in this case means very little. To check how much this strike is useful in breaking human bones, just do it on something similar in structure e.g. pig's leg. To check how likely that punch will knockout an opponent, put an accelerometer inside something very similar to human head+neck and do the test. Bare newtons of strike means nearly nothing, even when measured with high precision.

@@NeeSut You are correct that the padding reduces the peak impact force, and this is one of the considerations in measuring impact performance when using simple force output from a load cell. If the padding is identical between tests, comparisons can be made, and this is how most scientific studies that use load cells to measure human impact performance qualify their results. However, to claim that these results mean "very little" is not just a critique of this video, but of the literal hundreds of scientific studies measuring human physical performance using load cells. That kind of statement is more than overly dismissive and is not accurate or reflective of reality. In addition, as a member of the sports science community, I can say that of the two measuring devices (load cell and accelerometer), the load cell is most often considered the "gold standard" of measurement. There have been a number of recently published reliability studies investigating the use of accelerometer-based devices for measuring human striking performance that have shown that these devices are not very reliable.

@@WushuEngineer ok. Let's do a step back. Cuz you're arguing more about the correctness of measurement of the force of impact. Which, as you mentioned, when done in the same environment, could be a basis for comparison. Now my biggest concern is different. I challenge not the quality of measurement, but how the result of this measurement will be useful for the real application. Does that guarantee that if 2 different people, that score the same amount of Newtowns in this test, have the same ability to break someone's bone? Or their ability to knock out another person is equal? My answer is - no, unless those 2 people have other similar characteristics like their mass and the mass of their arms. Should be obvious, but if you're not convinced, can give you a couple real life examples.

@@NeeSut To briefly address your question, a load cell measures force as a real-world quantity. The physical characteristics of the striker, such as mass, velocity etc. all contribute to the final force output. Typically, heavier, stronger and faster strikers will generate higher impact forces, although skill and technique play a major role as well. An experienced striker will typically be able to generate far more impact force than an inexperienced one. We have seen this in the many hundreds of striking tests that we have performed over the years. I think that you are missing the point of my statements on the "correctness" of the measure. You're arguing about the real-world application of research reporting on force as a measure of human striking performance. What I am trying to alert you to is that your critique actually encompasses much of sports science and its measuring methodology. So, your critique can be applied to just about every other sports science study looking at human striking performance, not just some random video on KZbin that you just decided to comment on for whatever reason. I think one of your previous comments suggested something like kicking cow bones or something like that. Breaking sticks and stones and bricks and bones are fun martial arts demonstrations to do. Hell, even I do those kinds of things on my channel from time to time. However, these are not scientific tests and do not provide a scientific framework to expand our knowledge of human performance and training methods. I can see that you're really passionate about this subject though. What I would recommend is that, instead of leaving comments on random KZbin videos, that you put that passion to good work and actually start studying and improving on the methods of human performance measurement. If you're not in sports science right now, consider committing to a course of study and ultimately to publishing a paper that could help to improve the body of research, much as we have been doing for the last decade or so. I agree with you that there are serious limitations to reporting on peak impact force alone as a measure of human impact performance. This is one of the reasons that we have pioneered, developed and studied our Impulse Block approach to human impact performance measurement. This is a modified analysis of force output from a load cell that allows the calculation of Impulse, Momentum, Apparent Mass, Kinetic Energy and Power. This of course gives a much more comprehensive picture of human striking performance.

Thanks for your comment. You are most certainly correct in that different blade profiles will penetrate samples in very different ways. Spikes are always going to be particularly vicious against any form of armor other than rigid plates. I just had to decide on one particular blade profile in the beginning in order to allow for direct comparisons between tests over time. I suppose I could have chosen more than one blade type, but that would have increased the amount of testing and data analysis and made it unsustainable for me to do the tests and make the videos. In the end, I decided on the tanto blade because we happened to have one, the blade is still representative of a fairly broad range of knives, and it was simple to attach to the rig because of the handle scales. Perhaps not the best reasons, but better to institute this kind of test limitation and actually perform the tests and make the videos than to make the testing such a burden that it never gets done.

Welcome aboard!

Actually no, adding equal resistance does not change the relationship. There should be no change.

Thanks for your comments. This modification effectively involves extending the excitation+, excitation-, signal+ and signal- connections to the bridge, which is common practice when connecting load cells to the respective interface circuitry (as per your second comment). I have tested it before and after the modification to make sure, and the load cell output does not change.

No worries. I'll still keep an eye out for any reference to it because I think I've heard similar rumors. It could even be a story that came out of some actual military testing that was being performed and it simply got taken out of context and developed a life of its own. Stranger things have happened on the internets.

No such personal body armour exists to my knowledge. Currently the cutting edge armour uses Ceramic plates (Silicon or Almuinium) & many bonded layers of UHMWPE. Another interesting "self healing" armour that exists is based on ceramic balls that drop down under gravity to replace the shattered balls, they're mainly only good for building armour.

Thank you for your comment. Yes, referencing prior work and appropriate standards is one of the first things that any scientist or engineer should do before launching into R&D. I have NIJ Standard-0115.00 on file as a resource along with the NIJ Standard-0101.06. I referenced NIJ Standard-0115.00 when I originally designed my pendulum test rig. If I were designing a commercial product, I would have to send samples off to a suitable independent testing laboratory such as BMT in Melbourne, to perform the full testing protocol and provide an official laboratory test report. I have done this periodically for the commercial ballistic protection system that I am designing. However, sending samples off for full independent testing during the sometimes long and iterative design process is a very expensive endeavor. Even large companies that could potentially afford that expense during the R&D cycle often choose to do as I have done, which is to perform in-house testing using equipment and methods informed by the appropriate standards. This allows products to be developed without the high overheads of constant testing until they are ready to be officially tested by an independent laboratory. I am certainly not in a position to fit the bill for a full independent test of a simple proof of concept test sample intended specifically to be showcased on a KZbin video.

But the pendulum is different from these standards. I think it's better to simulate the standard test apparatus, and follow their rules of penetrations. Otherwise your materials will have different results when test in Lab according to these standards, and these results will misguide your improvements. @@WushuEngineer

@@Shenzhoustab Relax, mate. The NIJ Standard-0115.00 Table 1 lists the energies associated with the stab tests, which is what I referenced in designing the pendulum test rig. How those energies are reached, whether by compressed air or gravity drop or by pendulum as I have done in this test, is immaterial for the R&D cycle. Following the test protocols as described in the standard exactly may be important for you because you appear to represent a commercial interest in the stab-resistant armor industry. However, I am not a commercial entity. This is a KZbin video for a KZbin channel.

Yes, we are developer of stab resistant materials since 2009, and always follow the Standards exactly. Your video channel impressed me very much. Glad to meet a friend of same mind on KZbin. :)@@WushuEngineer

@@Shenzhoustab No worries. If you want, you could send me a product catalogue and/or some armor samples some time. I’d be interested in seeing what your flagship products are.

In my defense, I was wearing footy shorts, part of the Aussie national dress code. I just didn’t have on me hi-vis T-shirt and thongs, your honor.

Hi. I don't usually provide seller details on my channel. However, in this case I did try to find the original seller details, but the link was broken so it looks like they've either shut down or changed. I originally ordered both the UHMWPE felt and the UHMWPE UD sheets from Aliexpress, and there are a number of sellers on either Aliexpress and Alibaba that sell similar UHMWPE felt and UD products, so you should be able to find one that will ship to your location.

@@WushuEngineer Thank you very much for your answer, I wish you good work.

Thanks for your comment and questions. Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to develop the equipment that would be necessary to give an accurate, reliable, scientific 2D mapping of force per unit area with respect to time. This is what you would need to measure the effects of striking with particular surface areas - such as the ends of the nunchaku. In terms of general impact characteristics such as momentum and energy, those strikes would still be lower, but the potential impact force per unit area would be a lot higher. As another example, in our case, we have a lot of barehand strikes with small areas of the fingers and hands, that are much lower energy than normal strikes, but that affect much smaller areas of the target leading to higher impact pressure at the point of contact. The technology exists and I could design and build the equipment, it's just very expensive at the moment.

@@WushuEngineer great answer. Thank you.

Thanks for your comment and questions. The UD term that the industry seems to apply to the plastic sheet is a bit of a misnomer because actually the fibres run in both x and y axes in each sheet. They should call it bidirectional. I'm sure there would be some benefit in setting some of those sheets at 45 degrees. I would have to experiment with it and see how much of a difference it would make. In terms of the mail, the samples that I've seen and handled would not dissipate force from a small impact point effectively enough to make a difference. Historically, this has been one of the weaknesses of mail armor. It would of course depend on how large the individual links are. However, there is one aspect that I forgot about when I made that quick series of comments in my video. Recently, scientists at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University and Caltech in the US have developed reactive mail armour out of specially designed 3D printed segments. Now, we know that Bilbo's coat of mithril mail was made by the dwarven smiths, who, next to elves, were masters of their craft. So, it would not be inconceivable that an incredibly gifted dwarven smith made this particular mithril shirt in much the same way as the recently developed reactive mail. It would have taken a ridiculous amount of time and care, but I will concede that it would have been possible given the skill of the dwarves.

Hi. Thanks for your comment and question. I didn't use the UHMWPE felt in this video, I used what's called UHMWPE Unidirectional (UD) Plastic Sheet. It's much thinner than the felt product but is a plastic sheet rather than a fabric. I used four layers of the UHMWPE UD plastic sheet bonded with silicone adhesive in this video. I would personally trust this arrangement (4 layers of UHMWPE UD plastic sheet bonded with silicone) myself. I believe it would significantly improve survivability in the event of a stabbing attack with a conventional knife blade like the one I used in the test. As I mentioned in the video, it won't stop everything and anything, but it's significantly better than any other flexible product that I have tested.

First of all, thank you very much for your answer. Wouldn't it be better if you used 4 layers of uhmwpe felt instead of 4 layers of uhmwpe plastic? I wish you a good day and good work in advance.@@WushuEngineer

@@MOHAMMED_EL_ISLAM I would have to test that arrangement and see how it performs. I can try to slot in a test in one of my upcoming videos. I'm currently developing the armor system a bit more by trying to develop and incorporate a reactive gel. Perhaps when that's done, I can do another test with 4 layers of bonded felt.

@@WushuEngineer I wish them continued success.

Thank you for your comment and question. That is a very good question and may take a bit of background explanation first. Apologies for the wall ‘o text. There are two important reference “points” when striking or kicking, these are: 1. centre of mass and 2. your connection with the ground. If all the striker is able to reference is their centre of mass, the reactive forces from a strike will either knock them back or they will have to preemptively compensate for the reactive forces by “falling” into a target while striking. Falling into a target is not tactically desirable, although it is common amongst less skilled strikers. Having no enhanced connection with the ground also means that the striker cannot easily modify their apparent or effective mass - which is the percentage of their total body mass that is actively involved in the strike. The more skilled the striker is, the more enhanced their connection to the ground becomes. They are able to shunt reactive forces through their dynamic biomechanical structure into the ground, rather than have these reactive forces knock them back. They are also able to modify their own apparent mass - thus enhancing their impulse, kinetic energy and power. So, to finally answer your question, when striking or kicking, if I were standing on a load cell or scale, it would register my mass increasing at the point of impact as I reference the ground and shunt reactive forces down into the ground instead of allowing them to knock me back off my feet. This also allows me to create a short-lived pulse of sustained force at the point of impact shunted through the same connection to the ground. This equates to enhancing my apparent or effective mass. So, increasing my apparent mass while maintaining a high impact velocity allows me to increase several striking characteristics like Impulse (transferred momentum), kinetic energy and power.

@@WushuEngineer Brilliant reply, very interesting. If i understand correctly, i have a few more questions if you dont mind: 1) In the above example, would the scale on the floor read the same amount as the sensor on the bag? If so, would that equality only apply to straight attacks, not spinning techniques? 2) Since the apparent mass is shifted forward at the final kick position, should that final position be unstable as a static stretch? I.e should you need support to stretch all the way to the final kick position without falling forward? 3) Falling forward is undesirable tactically, but is it not the correct / most effective technique? From what i understand, at the peak of power output youre only stabilised by the target (and the ground), so once that target moves away you inherently become unstable and fall forward. 4) Does this control of apparent mass / falling forward have anything to do with training the slide part of a sliding side kick? Love your stuff btw, its inspired me many times.

@@negativedamage5103 Another great set of questions and thank you for the kind words. Glad to be of service. I may have to address your set of questions with a dedicated video. I’ll have to see whether time and resources allow for this. I’ll address each of your questions here individually. However, I do need to provide further context. I am answering from the standpoint of the system that I practice. So, what is a desirable outcome in terms of training and application in my system will differ in other systems. There are very simple systems out there that are aimed at getting someone able to hit reasonably hard without too much training. The advantage with that approach is that you get a reasonable outcome very quickly. However, these systems typically lead to plateauing later because of their simplicity. Biomechanically advanced system such as my own take a long time to teach and understand to their full extent, however the outcome when properly trained and practiced is constant improvement that does not plateau quickly or easily. There are pros and cons to all approaches. In my system, we try to avoid the concept of “collision” with an opponent. This may seem a little confusing because most people would define a strike as a “collision”. However, what we mean by “collision” is the use of centre of mass as a hammer, rather than as a reference point. In other words, throwing one’s centre of mass at an opponent to maximize impact force. This is an intuitive behavior, and we all do this to a certain extent naturally. The disadvantages to doing this are as follows: 1. Because ground reference and centre of mass are not controlled and stabilized, it is very difficult to draw on those reference points to increase apparent mass at the point of impact. 2. Because the centre of mass is thrown about during combat to generate impact force, this tends to generally destabilize the fighter, making them more prone to take-downs and other forms of sweeps and destabilization strikes and grapples. 3. Every time centre of mass is “thrown” to generate impact force, this action requires the fighter to stop their uncontrolled forward momentum before they can change attack vectors or respond to a cunning opponent’s counterattack. This constant course-correction and accounting for this constant falling costs both extra energy and time. These costs mount up over time, significantly decreasing the fighter’s effectiveness. So, in our system, we embrace the philosophical concept of Yin and Yang on a very practical level. Whenever we are attacking in a particular direction, we aim to perfectly balance that forward (Yang) attack with an equal and opposite (Yin) counterbalancing movement. Often, this can be seen practically as a rotation about the centreline of the body, where one half of the body rotates forward and the other half rotates back. Incidentally, the centreline intersects the centre of mass, so if the centre of mass is being “thrown” around, it essentially becomes impossible to use centreline concepts because the centreline is unstable, distorted and broken. When we move in combat, we adopt similar concepts of controlled movement of centre of gravity. That is one of the reasons that when someone starts training in a system such as ours, the first few years of training revolve around learning how to stand (stance practice) and walk (various forms and stepping sequences that are very controlled). OK, now that I’ve provided sufficient context, I’ll address your questions: 1. Because the load cell on the wall is measuring an impact force, the peak force and waveform would be significantly different to what the scale on the floor would read. This is due to how the force is being generated at the impact site. The striking surface (fist, leg, foot etc.) is typically accelerated over a distance leading to an impact, whereas the leg resting on the scale remains stationary. So, the force encountered by the scale will be much lower (once body mass is accounted for) and will be spread over a longer time-period along with a certain amount of attenuation due to energy loss in the human biomechanical system. However, if both impact peaks were integrated with respect to time to yield impulse values, there would be a correlation between those. They probably won’t be identical due to various losses and attenuation, but there should be a correspondence between them. Spinning attacks are much harder to anchor to the ground, so the correspondence would still be there, but the absolute force values would be much lower on the scale. 2. As I mentioned earlier, in my system we aim to maintain control of centre of mass during impacts and thus we try to balance the forward attack with an equal and opposite rotational shift of mass about centreline. So, you should be able to kick forward and hold the kick position indefinitely without falling forwards. Many variations of this are actually practiced and trained regularly in systems such as my own. 3. As per my preamble, falling into an opponent in my system is not desirable for several reasons. So, ideally, at the point of impact, if the target of the kick or strike were removed, there should be no falling forward. 4. Sliding side kicks, forward flying kicks and the like are a little harder to explain, but they also involve absolute control of centre. During the slide or the jumping part of a flying kick, the centre of mass is set in motion, and it is during that motion that the kick is delivered. Here, the only reference point is the centre of mass. However, because this has been set in motion, we can also deliver the energy and momentum that has been imparted to the centre of mass during the controlled jump. In this case, even though the centre of mass is moving, it is controlled and referenced at the point of impact in much the same way as a static kick, through the use of various rotations and balanced transfer of force. So, a moving kick or strike like this is an example of the origin of the set of biomechanical human axes (which is the centre of mass) being in motion. All control methods and mechanisms still apply. Of course, because of our natural inclinations to “collide” with an opponent, getting this kind of balanced transfer right is pretty difficult. It’s easier to accomplish this in static situations. Time and training… I hope that this explanation makes some sense to you.

​@@WushuEngineer Wow so much info to digest, i love it! I think im understanding you correctly, but let me just check. Am i right in thinking that your system sacrifices power / max effort for balance / flow / technique / tactic? From what i understand, the most powerful strike one can produce is inherently unstable, since it uses the body as a wedge that requires the target to be referenced in order to become stable. I.e. you cant push against the ground fully without that target to wedge against, right? Thats why overcoming isometric exercises are effective for max effort. I had an idea of testing these forces by using a ground sensor to determine power without hitting a target. Itd answer my question of "does an unbalanced strike generate more or less force from the floor than a balanced strike?". Also, does your system teach striking through targets on straight attacks? Because that was the kind of unbalancing i had in mind when thinking about static stretches. For example, when stretching out a side kick, if i grab a support i can push my hips forward from over my back foot and stretch forward another 6 inches, which should be where id ideally stop when hitting an actual target. Its also where i should be for a sliding side kick if i understand that technique correctly. I wonder if its worth stretching with a support to practise that final final position, rather than practising my balance at the final position.

@@negativedamage5103 Thanks for your continued questions, I do enjoy discussing these concepts, but I must reiterate that I am answering purely from the perspective of my own system. I certainly acknowledge that there are other valid approaches to combat. I have consciously not set my channel up as a training advice channel. There are enough of those kinds of channels out there, and the old proverb: “different strokes for different folks” certainly applies in this case. So, I am not providing any kind of training instruction or advice here. I am simply discussing the reasoning behind the combat approach adopted in my particular system. Yes, to a certain extent, it is correct to say that my system sacrifices raw offensive force. In our system, a conscious compromise is made in favor of tactics and defence while simultaneously accounting for that drop-off in offensive force by training balanced force production in a consistent and structured training program over time. As with many of the older systems that focus on self-defence application, my system does indeed sacrifice unbalanced offensive force in favor of a balanced, more defensive, tactical approach to combat. Note that this does not mean a less aggressive approach, because extreme aggression is required in order to survive against the odds of an unfair fight. In our case, the aggression must be controlled and focused both physically and mentally. The reasoning behind this conscious compromise is tied into the fact that in fights against superior numbers or against armed opponents, a raw, unbalanced offensive approach is often too inherently slow, energy inefficient and risky to maximize the odds of survival. Extension through a target is a very basic principle that is taught at beginner level. However, in our case, extension does not equate to overbalancing forward. Practitioners train to be able to extend and “open” through all the joints when striking or grappling. In addition, the “wedge” that you mentioned is incorporated too, but in a way that is structured and balanced through the use of various stances (some even look like wedges - albeit wedges that are supported along all three sides of the triangle) to maximize extension while simultaneously remaining balanced. Hence the emphasis on stance training in traditional Kung Fu that most people are familiar with from watching old kung-fu movies. This is done not just to train the legs, but to train someone to be able to maximize extension while retaining structure and balance. Following on to the example that you give of an isometric push: in our case, we should be structurally sound and not overbalancing when asserting that isometric force. Think of pushing a car. There are two ways to do it. One is to keep leaning forward into it with feet back in such a way that if the car took off, you’d fall flat. The other is to step forward into a balanced stance with every push. The first approach is easier to grasp and accomplish, although the other approach achieves the same goal but without sacrificing stability. In the example of a kick, a practitioner in our system should train to extend the maximum range of that kick as far as they can, but without overbalancing forward or breaking their centreline structure by thrusting hips forward. When striking or grappling, the practitioner should be connected to the target, but not dependent on it for stability (or anything else for that matter - dependency can be used by a cunning opponent). You could say that this is a more internal approach to maximizing reach without the cost of sacrificing stability and structure. Over time, through developing a sense of how forces are generated and directed through the body, the amount of force that can be produced increases significantly past what most people are capable of through conventional leaning, sacrificing structure or simply throwing body mass into their actions. However, it is true that you will always likely be able to generate more absolute force if you ignore stability and lean into a push or strike, but doing so comes at a cost as I’ve mentioned. The desired outcome will dictate whether that is a cost worth paying.