I remember watching this program years ago, and I was like, “Oh, that’s cool. But isn’t science all about controlled experimentation?” The guys are different weight classes throwing pretty much the same kick, except karate for some reason. They really did Simon Rhee dirty. The guy is a legend and has devastating tornado kicks from Taekwondo. Not sure why he was representing karate, especially noting the aforementioned weight class issue. Nat Geo. Smh
in this situation is too hard to have full control in it, is hard to have all thus 4 martial art participate to have the same exact height and wight and experience and muscle, so we narrow the participate is closet is possible. (sorry my English is bad)
I don't think they picked the kick, I think it was the artist himself... and I don't think the people running the show were honest, they might have used the diction "best kick" or "most effective kick".. then after the edits and re-scripting, it was "most powerful" kick (I doubt the narator even watched or heard the video with his continued mispronunciation of Capoeira even after the practitioner said it).
@Ali Zhear Your comment makes no sense. Its easy to find a karate guy and tell him to do the his most powerful kick instead of a front kick Whats hard about that?
That "karate" guy who did the front kick is Taekwondo Master Simon Rhee and in his prime, he was probably the most badass guy on that stage. At the time of this recording, he was pushing 50+ years old. Probably why he did a front kick. His brother Phillip Rhee is amazing as well. They were in the movie The Best of the Best together.
Ah I didn't notice that was Simon Rhee, Phillip Rhees Best of the Best 3 where he takes on a resurgent Nazi/KKK group in a small southern town is underrated
I remember watching this when it first came out. I was training in Muay Thai with the Thai instructor who used to train Uriah Faber (there was some bad blood between them). Anyway, we would spar with TKD practitioners one or twice a month to teach us how to attack and defend people with other skills. TKD guys are insanely fast. There was one fighter who had a "slap kick." He would "slap" your bare arm with his foot and leave toe prints. It wasn't a deep bruise like a normal kick might leave but it was so fast it pretty much landed at will, and it was very painful. I winced when I watched this guy kick the bag in the video. It brought back some horrible memories.
Brens kicking technique is perfect. I think the answer is quite simple:it's the thousands of more reps compared to other arts (on cost of some other skills of course). It's basically boxing with your legs. Still even as team Taekwondo i don't give too much about this test. It all depends on the athlethes and their strenghts and preferences what and how they train. There are different levels within each art of its own. And yes, the Karate thing was unfair. Would have loved to see bren doing a tornado kick btw
Yea I was thinking that too. Brends I top peak physical form weighs 200+ our at least close and is one of the best TKD practioners in the world. I know Simon Lateef and the other dude r serious martial artist as well but this test needs multiple people from each art to get a better read
Bruce Lee quoted. I fear not the man who practiced 10,000 kicks once, I fear the man that practiced one kick 10,000 times. It’s repetition & muscle memory. You’ll never forget your technique for life and kicking skills after doing it way more then 10,000 of times. I never had a life kick counter since 7 yrs old. 🤷🏻♂️ One thing I know is this. I’ll never forget how to kick. And it’s all about proper technique, speed, torque twist of your whole core and body. It’s like a push, pull, twist action with your entire body and harnessing energy then releasing at the point of impact. It’s a relax/tense action. Relax then trigger your nerves to move without really any thought process. You know you’re kicking but don’t really have to think about doing it. Like kicking a soccer ball. Relax thru the motion until the point of impact then tense. And drive your weight into the target. If you’re too tense before kicking you’ll Telegraph and will kick slower. You’re just fighting against yourself. Don’t muscle it, hit it with speed. Works like a quick a twitch nerve action. Which polymetric drills help increase that bursting power and speed like things like sprinting, jumping drills,footwork drills and leg lifts.
Bren essentially did a 180 version of the Tornado Kick which made more sense because there's less room for error. The reason why I've called it that is because his base foot leaves the ground allowing him to essentially launch into the kick. You'll also notice Bren's body is leaning back further than your typical Round kick. So perhaps Bren did this on purpose. I've tried this kick, but I'm not Bren. Bren probably had insane Hip Dexterity when this was made which allowed him to throw a very quick Round Kick because Speed = Power. It sucks that we didn't get to see the Karateka throw a Mawashi Geri.
@@Tkdm5 That's why I try to do the Kick more slower and relaxed. It's like Tennis, you don't muscle the racquet, you let the racquet do most of the work. You should look at Rafael Nadal's fore hand. It's like a whip.
I also remember this and been a TKD practitioner I always liked it 😜. Seriously though I always thought they did karate a disservice with him using a front kick, to this day I still dont understand the thought process that went in to making that decision 🤷♂️
I'm 100% sure it was a director deciding that the kicks looked too similar. Like Seth was pointing out the structure is quite close, even with the flashy Capoeira move. So probably made Karate do something different so they didn't have three nearly identical kicks
@@erithanis Yeah, but not very scientific. If you're comparing kicks, you compare the same type of kick and analyze the subtle differences. It's like "Which of these drinks is mosy carbonated: fanta, sprite, orange juice, cola". The director is a hack
It's the same video. In sequence, scientists come to the conclusion that the Capoeira kick, despite being slower and weaker than that of Taekwondo, would be more "efficient" because it generates more force in relation to speed. However in another similar test with a unstable platform to simulate a combat situation the Taekwondo kick was the fastest, strongest and also the most efficient.
@@MarinhoRFilho oh ok. I didn’t watch the whole video cuz i saw this and i ain’t watching to the end where it says capoeira is the best 😂 My fault bro.
Kwonkicker has a great video explaining what we in old school TKD usually call "jump powered round kicks" he's pulling with his front leg and then actually driving back down into the floor like he's jumping through the bag.
You're having the exact same problems with the video as I had, man! It was always super interesting what they did with the Fight Science.. but somehow always a little off, as if they didn't know a thing about martial arts.. and of course the pronunciations lol. You nailed it btw
I’ve realized that the heavier/stiffer the target is, the more it’s sensitive to mass. The lighter/more flexible, the more sensitive to speed. For example, a double end bag does care how much mass you throw in, it’s all dependent on speed. A slap will make it go crazy more than a knee.
that's mostly due to surface area and elasticity... you can actually affect the dbl ended bag more with a slipping grip than a knee strike due to the same forces at work. (same with throwing an air filled balloon, vs holding it with your thumb, middle, ring, and pinky fingers and poking your fore finger into it, then letting go with the other fingers... it goes further with the fingers letting go than throwing)
I like this one. Sensei Seth is examining one of the few empirical studies on martial arts and power of techniques. I think those natgeo shows did a great job, with some accuracy. Sensei Seth is demonstrating the importance of "Peer review". Empirical research requires peer review to explore the validity and limitations of studies and their findings! ALL empirical studies should discuss both their findings and the limitations of their research, and natgeo did not do the latter. Keep it up Sensei!!
I’m not a capoeira guy but I have trained with Mestre Kinha from Capoeira Besouro and I can tell you now that Capoeira has the most advanced kicking curriculum and most unique sweeps in martial arts, far more advanced then any other stand up martial arts system. Second to Capoeira I’d say Taekwondo has a far more advanced kicking curriculum then any other martial arts. If you’ve seen Larate from the 20s and 1930s you’d see that the kicks utilized today in karate were not even present yet. With that being said as a Gung fu and Kenpo man I still say Capoeira has the strongest kicks. Additionally to that fact, how they land after a kick is landed or missed is out of strategy not out of flaw and they are not only comfortable fighting from Those positions but extremely effective in those positions.
hahahahahahahahaha this is funny shit, they do not have the most advanced kicks, and crowder is a freak of nature. most Capoeria players are slow as shit compared to crowder and are no where as large either. TKD literally has the most powerful kicks on earth
The artists themselves chose the kick they wanted to use. If I remember correctly, Karate guy picked the front kick because it's in a straight line as opposed to the arc that the round kicks are. Straight line is faster = more force.(according to him)
@@houseofaction I myself have a lot of TKD experience... but I found out my teacher/school used tons of traditional karate in stances, forms, and moves. I think he might have done similar.
Yeah, maybe he didn't understand the physics of rotation/torque? Well, even though the experimental set up was rather flawed, it was an interesting video.
I'd really like to see you react to the old "Human Weapon" series. How bullshido are the "ancient arts" they encounter, how serious are the techniques and what are your takes on the final fights. They do some of the Fight Science-style animations, but the "hosts" are real people and the locations are sometimes quite gorgeous.
Asking about how much energy 1800 ft-lbf is: a 7.62x39 from an AKM will have about 2000 ft-lbf as it exits the muzzle, and a 5.56x45 from an AR-15 will have about 1750 ft-lbf when it does. If you're wearing level 4 plate armor and get hit by one of those rounds so it dumps its energy on your surface instead of poking a hole through you with it, that's what the capoeira kick feels like. The karate guy's front kick was comparable to a 9mm.
The Tae Kwan Do practitioner is Simon Rhee, who was my Tae Kwan Do teacher when I was 5 years old in Woodland Hills, California. Simon Rhee is also an award winning fight choreographer that received an award for fight choreography of the blockbuster movie Inception (Ken Watanabe, Leonardo Dicaprio). Thank you for sharing this.
You can also see in the video that TKD uses the top of the foot, whereas MT uses the shin. More speed and power on the end of a lever, but also more delicate bones in this case so I suppose it's another tradeoff. Cool vid, Sensei Seth!
So I'm not much of a kickey-boy, but it looks to me like the Taekwondo guy is just so efficient at sending all of his mass into that rotation for the kick. It looked like his body sped up and rotated perfectly in unison, then made absolutely no effort to stop or balance until after the impact. The Muay Thai guy by comparison looked less willing to just fully commit to that spin , probably for defensive reasons. Brent seemed like he would do a full 360° if that missed, and Muay Thai guy was trading raw power for the ability to recover if he had to.
Yeah... Bcz Muay Thai you actually learn how to fight realistically, tae Kwon do is cool, but throw one kick like this, and if the person in front of you just make one step forward, you down.
@@intellectic9155 not necessarily. Muay thai is a fighting style first, and kicking was just one aspect of it. You can fight several matches of muay thai and win without throwing a single kick. Tkd, on the other hand, is solely centered around kicking. They train to kick efficiently and quickly. The thai fighter, on the other hand, has to consider guarding his lower half, and fighting without protection. Muay thai fighters are tougher and better conditioned, but tkd fighters are best at kicking.
KAPWERAH KICK! Btw I an subbing to this channel for actually putting some respek on tkd. I think the power may also have to do with the smaller surface area making contact with the bag. With the Muay Thai roundhouse the force is spread out over a large portion of his shin. FROM THERE IT’S SIMPLE MATHEMATICS!
Very beautiful, interesting and useful videos. Your channel is number 1 in the world of martial arts. I hope for more videos about kudo karate .ashihara karate and enshin karate
The funny thing is the Taekwondo didn't win lol they announced at the end that they actually secretly measured one more thing which was velocity which Capoeira won.
The TKD kick uses both legs to thrust the body forward (just before the kick). This allows the power of both legs and body weight to add power to the kick. The support legs quickly returns to the ground (allowing a fast kick recovery).
If this show was about guns, they’d compare a bazooka to a sniper rifle by using one to shoot a steak from a mile away and the other to shoot an SUV at point blank, then conclude one is obviously more powerful with a bunch of random numbers and unrelated equations
You get a like for explaining the muay thai round house kick, even though i do kyokushin this is really goint to help me cuz i am not so good at kicking since i just did boxing before i started Karate! Thank you!
I admit, I've been practicing TKD since the late 80s (back in the so-called Power Era) and while TKD is indeed designed for speed rather than power, the math seems a bit off. After all, a Tornado kick or Roundhouse would have done better than a damn front kick. Then again, what can you expect from a program from the NatGeo, who are notoriously reckless with their findings? After all, Lemmings DONT commit mass suicide! Given that Seth has experts in Muay T, TKD, Karate & Capoeria, he could easily arrange to have the record set straight--he could even add arts like Jujitsu, Wing Chun & JKD.
It's funny I turned the video off full screen, you said "I notice you're watching, subscribe", I checked and clicked subscribe and you said "thank you". Nice timing.
Fight science was about as far away from science as you can get. I'm sure I watched 1 clip where they had a knee as the strongest kick instead of comparing knees from all the guys.
3:12 - it's funny, because "martelo de negativa" literally means "hammer of refusal". But then I found out that "negativa" in capoeira means like "dodge" or "squat". Great video, great fan! Cheers from Brazil!
LOL! So, two things, boss! First, I did subscribe, good luck with the new channel! Second, i could tell it really hurt you to give those props to TKD. You really should do a whole segment of Sensei Seth Reacts for KwonKickers' videos! You could make that whole thing hilarious! Then have a collab with him on your main!
I pushed the like button as soon as you said"I hate it! and it's wrong". Other than the measurment test itself,there was not any scientific method behind.No weight categories , not enough speciments to each category/art , techniques were totaly diffent in each art. Great analysis Seth!
Hey Seth, I'm pretty sure another thing about the taekwondo kick is how they use body mechanics and leverage with the rotation of the hips. You are essentially pushing/pulling off the ground, then rotating your hips, and extending the leg as a lever, same as any kick. I think that ye specific motion that taek uses is what gives it that extra force with less motion.
i remember trying to have this very same discussion on this video with friends of mine back when I had only trained in karate and people thought my opinion was super biased. Basically, all the same points you brought up. The guys are different sizes, the kicks are all a different kick, all hit the body differently based on the size of the impact (ball of the foot vs an entire shin), where they hit, etc. Basically, it's a nifty video but by no means actually covers who is better or which kick is better or which one is most effective in a fight.
I have to share this story. I was just watching this video and my daughter, who has non verbal autism, came and hit the back arrow to rewatch the part where you were climbing on the chair. She then took my phone and watched it over and over again. I think it was the sound that was playing while you were climbing. She likes tapping things. It’s a stim for her. I got a good laugh listening to it over and over. Especially, because you said “don’t do karate like that”. Haha. I practice karate. 😂
Seth.. the Capoeira kick is basically Miagi Do's Crane Kick, just done from a crouching position and as a roundhouse .. hope this helps with any mental blocks
Your guess about the TKD kick is right. One of the main things we learn to do with any type of turning kick is to not keep our other foot on the floor, because that slows the kick down due to friction between the foot and ground as well as it gives an "anchor" to the body's center of mass. If the Muay Thai guy added that same thing to his kick, I think he would actually have both the fastest and strongest kick. Also, TKD didn't "win" anything other than saying that its way of performing a roundhouse kick is the best for speed and power (not including Karate because for some reason the guy did a front kick) in this specific test, so on a stationary heavy bag. And I'm saying that as someone who does believe that TKD does have the overall best kicking technique (at least ITF TKD does, not the Olympic WT TKD).
As someone who has studied Tang Soo Do, and wants to continue to study Korean martial arts, if they would have given Karate guy a roundhouse kick, he would have been in line with the other martial artists. Assuming there was some sort of method to the science behind it, say by having a large number of martial artists who actually fight with the martial art, kick a large number of times, and control for as many variables as possible, I can't say Tae Kwon Do would have beaten everybody like THAT, but their roundhouse kicks would have been more consistently more powerful that the karate people's roundhouse kicks! Tae Kwon Do practitioners kick! A LOT! But science makes bad TV, so we got something that, to a non-practitioner of martial arts would actually have looked different, and we got the stronger kicker of the two doing the stronger kick! TL;DR Karate was 100% robbed, but Tae Kwon Do would have still come out ahead because of the focus on kicks.
Karate was robbed because it wasn’t there, the dude from “karate” is Simon Rhee, a TaeKwonDo practitioner, stunt man and actor. So I don’t hold any faith in any of the information presented in the original science video.
@@AndrewMusicStudie I'm not disregarding your statement because it's not technically true, it's just not relevant! They could have put literally any karate practitioner up there, and had him do a front kick and it wouldn't have generated NEARLY the force of a roundhouse kick, performed by the same individual. And over the entire populations of Karate practitioners and Tae Kwon Do practitioners, Tae Kwon Do practitioners are going to kick better because they kick more.
Sensei Seth: Why are they pronouncing it “Cap-where-uh?” Also Seth: “Kuh-Raw-Dee” Lol tbh, I think most people don’t want to seem like a total nerd saying it in the accent, like Ross from friends with his “ka-da-teh!”
The f=ma formula only comes into play in calculating the force on the bag is when the leg is in contact with bag, and "a" in that case would actually be the deceleration of the leg or more precisely the deceleration of the rotational motion of the whole body. The calculation of the force on the bag has nothing directly to do with the initial acceleration of the leg or more precisely the rotational acceleration of the whole body to reach the max speed of the kick.
I didn't know for a long time that there were more episodes of this. The only episode I saw had ninjutsu, boxing, Brent was there to represent taekwondo and for some reason they gave him the katana to swing around. I miss the 2000s, maybe it's just coz I was at the peak of my training in the latter half but martial arts seemed to be most mainstream and popular around the mids, lot of stuff on telly about it. Twas a good time to be part of the scene
The Tae Kwon Do fighter keeps most of his momentum because of that little elevation of the back foot. The Muay Thai Fighter's kick was similar is attack, but keeping his toes on the ground as a pivot creates some friction in the twist, slowing down his kick. TKD is also centered around rapid kicks, so his fast twitch muscles have to be on another level.
Regardless if Bren's kick was actually stronger or not, you gotta admit his technique was beautiful. I love the way he starts a circular motion with his upper body like a kyokushin kick, opens his hips up like a thai kick, then sinks back down as it lands.
I'm a fan of your videos. But just so anyone who reads this knows. The guy performing the front kick is Simon Rhee, from Best of the best.they had a taekwondo guy impersonate the karate style.
The biggest difference between the muy Thai and Taekwondo kicks is the point of contact. They are likely measuring the speed at the same place but everyone seems to miss that the farther away from the centrifuge u measure the force then the more force u will measure, even if they are swinging the same weight at the same speed.
Thats a pretty cool shirt Seth, i wonder where you got it from......Also its so weird that they have Karate do a front kick while everyone else does a roundhouse style kick
The karate guy is Simon Rhee, brother of Philip Rhee... They both starred in one of the best martial arts movies ever created, "The Best of the Best" - no pun intended :D... You need to make a reaction vid about their finale fight, and also about Philip Rhee's Tommy character, when he fights preliminaries - one of the sickest footworks I've seen in a movie
They did so many of these kind of videos. I swear I saw another one (maybe on Human Weapon?) where they had Bas Rutten on as a guest representing Muay Thai, and they claimed that Muay Thai had the hardest kicks. You gotta love how unscientific a lot of these tests truly are. Still, the shows were fun and raised a higher awareness of biomechanics, at the very least. And thanks to "Deadliest Warrior," we got the legendary "Death Battle" with fictional characters years later, so there is that.
You remind me of Jeff Speakman...maybe you are a Perfect Weapon as well!...About the Tae Kwon Do Guy, I think the secret of so much power is not the kick's force per se, but the powerful recoil..😎👍
That round kick was so powerful. the only problem with round kicks is that there is not alot of penatrating force no matter the power. I have very powerful kicks but no matter how hard I kick I can't move my opponent. even though I've Broken legs with little effort. So if I was going to label a most devastating kick it would be a step spin hook kick. Though it's probably one of the hardest kicks to land due to speed and inability to get both eyes on your target. Once your heel makes full contact try not to unalive your opponent.
Muay Thai guy kicked with his shin, which obviously is a significantly harder and more devastating bone to land with, but the Taekwondo guy kicked with his foot. Perhaps with this testing method of solely using the mass and acceleration to calculate, "who won" the extra amount of whip and distance between landing with the foot as opposed to shin skews the numbers a bit...
I've been waiting almost a decade for a martial artist to react to the dubious "Fight Science" series. Aside from the horrible research methodology (I'm a science nerd), letting each stylist choose different techniques didn't make sense if they're doing comparison. And the other episodes just got worse LOL.
@@houseofaction umm... NO, it doesn't make sense if you're calling what you are doing "science." Among other things in your research, you're supposed to hold all variables constant, except for the independent variable.
The confusion part is actually makes sense for Capoeira because it was made to resemble a dance too, so slaves wouldn't get caught by owners while practicing.
