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No-Touch Knockouts - what's the deal?

Hellbound said:
Well, the playground trick had more to it. There was something the person did beforehand, but I can't recall what now. I'm tempted to say it was somethign like holding their breath or pushing on a wall (that's been none-of-your-business years ago, so I can't remember exactly). In any case, the "prep" would reduce the free oxygen in the blood, which is why it would work (I would suppose).

Likewise, I wonder if locking knees, stress, and the adrenaline rush might not play similar roles in the supposed "no-touch" knock outs.
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It's called the choking game, and so far as I can tell kids do it everywhere in the world. Usually you do squats or sprint ahead of time to use up all the energy in your muscles (or maybe to saturate your blood with CO2?), then they either choke you or press on your chest so you can't breathe, causing anoxia which leads to euphoria and hallucinations. That's another perfect example for what i was saying though: I was at a place where there were a few occultists, an atheist and myself, and they started doing the choking thing. All the occultists had these crazy hallucinations, while the atheist hallucinated that it didn't work and that everyone was embarrassed. Then he woke up on the floor. Anyone can experience it, but the subjective experience is based on one's expectations. I had an injury and couldn't do the squats, by the way.
 
There's a technique I learned in defensive tactics as part of force protection training in the military. You strike someone with the meaty parts of your forearms across the carotid arteries in sort of a downward/crossing motion - this is done from behind, to "stun" someone - and it works on almost everyone. Your knees buckle. I don't know why it works - maybe shocks the system or something.

This WAS done in a compliant environment as part of a demonstration, and I noticed that light to medium force was more effective than medium to hard force. I'd speculate this is similar to the difference between a "sack tap" and a "full on groin punch." Having had both of these, I will take the full on groin shot any day. I've thrown up from a "sack tap" before.
 
JD, saw that technique in a Youtube vid recently. Guy's beating up on some woman in the street, a fellow from a karate school walked out to see what was up. Assaulter just goes ballistic that anyone would try to interfere, squares off on said karate guy.

Karate guy raises his right hand, assaulter comes in, and >boom!< karate guy used it as a feint to land a brutal left elbow right between the neck and jaw.

Assaulter stumbles backwards, falls to the ground, gets up wobbly, stumbles to the ground again, can hardly find his feet, retreats with the aid of a buddy. It was great.
 
Monkey Ghost said:
JD, saw that technique in a Youtube vid recently. Guy's beating up on some woman in the street, a fellow from a karate school walked out to see what was up. Assaulter just goes ballistic that anyone would try to interfere, squares off on said karate guy.

Karate guy raises his right hand, assaulter comes in, and >boom!< karate guy used it as a feint to land a brutal left elbow right between the neck and jaw.

Assaulter stumbles backwards, falls to the ground, gets up wobbly, stumbles to the ground again, can hardly find his feet, retreats with the aid of a buddy. It was great.
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:) I saw that one. Did you notice the Karate man hold his hands up after as if to say " I did'nt do anything, what a wuss"?
It was great.
 
I interpreted it as "Can't believe it was that easy!" It must have been a bit anticlimactic for him; he was probably ready for a fight better than what his white belts could give him.
 
I've seen that one. Kind of an older video. The "pimp's" hat goes flying off in a rather comical manner. It was similar, I suppose. The technique I'm describing didn't have to be applied full-force to have the effect.

ETA: Drat! Embedding Disabled! NOOO!

I would actually call this by all accounts, a "lucky shot." The karate instructor was bent backward, and would most likely have been knocked flat on his ass had the "pimp" attempted even the sloppiest of double-leg shoots rather than leading with his face. Despite the fact that what he did "worked," in that situation and in the stance he was in I think a stiff right cross would have been the safer call, but that's Monday Morning QB'ing at its finest.

At any rate, IIRC the side of the neck is a "cavity strike" and sufficient force will definitely have an effect. It's one of the places you're trained to whack with a collapsible baton, along with the meaty parts of the inner thigh/bicep. I'd attribute the pimp's post-smack stumbling to the header he took on the pavement post-beatdown rather than any kind of lasting vagal effects.
 
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Oh, I've been hit precisely there, and it produces a moment of pause.

*discontinuity*

Not painful, necessarily, but it can leave you defenseless especially if part of a combination.

I think you're right, pimp-man could have shot and probably put him down, but the way he squared off was perfect for so many things.
 
Monkey Ghost said:
I think you're right, pimp-man could have shot and probably put him down, but the way he squared off was perfect for so many things.
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Maybe I'm biased, but my instinct would have been to hit him with tai-otoshi so hard his ancestors would feel it.

 
*disparaging remark about gi-fighting*

I don't train techniques that require well-made clothes to help me. :D

But I'm a counter-striker by nature... obviously, pimp-man wasn't familiar with much besides basic brawling.

Me: teep, teep, *range established*, poo-smashed-face! Ghost grip!
 
Judo Hater!

Meet Karo Parisyan.



ETA: 02:08 for a beautiful sacrifice throw transition to kimura.
 
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I like Karo! But he's had a rough time these last few.

No Judo-hater, I. A pop in the face, an unexpected kick... they can be surprising. But nothing is as surprising to me as being swept and slammed:

"Hey dude."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm okay. It's just, my view changed too suddenly from looking at you to looking at the ceiling. I'm alright."
 
AaronAlexander said:
On the forehead. The point isn't that I didn't just push her over in a way where she stood a chance of staying up. I'm not personally a believer in Qi or the holy spirit, so I don't leave things to chance. The point is that she didn't believe it would work and she still fell like a sack of fertilizer and explained it in a much less pleasant way than people who believed in it. And it was definitely not a touch that would normally knock someone out, even though there were some confusion techniques along with it.
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Just because she said she didn't believe, doesn't mean she didn't. She might have been lying to keep from being ridiculed, but believed it nonetheless. Or she might have been hopeful that she did not believe. I think the evidence supports some kind of belief that the touch would work, in some way. Our belief structures are very complicated.
 
I'd love to see Dillman or his cronies go to a USJA club or BJJ school and actually ROLL with the students. Maybe they can do no-touch armbars and blood chokes, too. Or for that matter, any boxing gym that puts up fighters in pro competition.

When it comes to knocking people out, why not try your stuff against someone who makes a living doing it against skilled people who don't want to be knocked out rather than wide-eyed and credulous teenagers and old hippies? (A lot of those in Aikido, too - on the whole just as woo-steeped, although there are good Aikido schools out there...good luck finding one. Rule of thumb? If they're wearing hakamas, run for the door.)
 
Aaron, this No-Touch Knockout phenomenon clearly has elements of expectation and suggestion resulting in an ideomotor effect, but you seem to think there may be more to it. Have you considered whether there might be some (vestigial?) reflex involved? We know that some vestigial reflexes, e.g. the mammalian diving reflex, manifest to powerful effect in humans, and it is well known that some animals (e.g. chickens, rabbits) can be put into a relaxed trance-like state by tipping them onto their backs. Perhaps the No-Touch Knockout phenomenon has something in common with this kind of motor suppression reflex. It is interesting to see how similar the physical reactions are in religious, stage hypnosis, and martial arts knockouts, which suggests they have a common autonomic mechanism.

Just a thought...
 
dlorde said:
It is interesting to see how similar the physical reactions are in religious, stage hypnosis, and martial arts knockouts, which suggests they have a common autonomic mechanism.

Just a thought...
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Just to state it explicitly: I think that's exactly the angle to be explored. There's some glitch in the human brain or body that makes this kind of reaction likely, just like the way your leg swings up when your knee is tapped.

Different groups have discovered it and exploited it for their own ends and made up their own explanations for it that suit their needs. But it's like when a terrorist act occurs and a dozen different little organizations call up to take credit for it.

The martial artists and healers are exploiting something that their group's supposed power didn't actually cause, to further their own ends, but it really has nothing to do with chi, the holy ghost or anything else.
 
Now we're talking. But the question for me is, what groups use it and under what circumstances? And what phenomena does it elicit? Everyone has seen people fall, and it's clear to me that the experience is common, but the extent to which it can be carried and under what specific conditions it fares the best is still not clear. And it's dynamics - are there cultures where you get knocked out and have a bad experience? All examples are good examples.

It's really sort of like the pharmaceutical industry. You have some common principles, but a lot of you 'innovations' simply involve seeing what happens in nature and then trying to re-create it and then expand on it, because nobody has the power of imagination to come up with the kinds of things that evolve gradually over time.
 
Folly said:
I'm around on May 3rd. If you don't mind having someone who's going to talk about the subject's point of view afterward on here, I'm interested.
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I met with my supervisor today and she's moved it to the evening at her house. You could still come provided that I could find out who you are ahead of time so that I'm not bringing internet strangers to her home. If you do come there's going to be 20ish people from the department, and everyone will know everyone else except for you and me.

No problem with the subject's point of view. I'm fascinated with how everyone interprets it and so it's a pleasure to do some of these really experiential things with analytical people.

ETA: If you're a sturdy looking person you could also be the catcher. I'm not sure if anyone there is well suited to be catching. Like I said, I don't know who's there.
 
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A former poster here (Groundstrength) was doing to do the MDC for no-touch knock-outs.
If you're interested the chinese term is Lim Kong Jing (Empty force) and originally meant a feint designed to make an opponent move in a way you could take advantage of.
Shen Hong Xuen claimed to be able to fight with it but my teacher's bad vibes did for him http://www.taichichuan.co.uk/information/articles/the_water_margin.html
 
JoeyDonuts said:
Maybe I'm biased, but my instinct would have been to hit him with tai-otoshi so hard his ancestors would feel it.

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Why did those guys give up each time after a successful take-down? They should have all been followed with some serious gound-n-pound!
 
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