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Date Posted: 07:38:22 04/16/02 Tue
Author: Goktimus Prime
Subject: Screaming, yelling -- Hyyyyaaaaarrrrggghhh!!!!!!
In reply to: Jobesta 's message, "How to do Kip Ups" on 20:41:05 04/15/02 Mon

*paste* (Don't worry, I'm not going to sue myself for plagiarising my own text...)

I am rather skeptical about the purpose of "kiai" and other forms of screaming. Karate was institutionalised in Japan during the first World War, when the Imperial Forces decided to use it as a way to help brainwash their soldiers. This also saw the introduction of many elements that have become standard in Karate, such as the coloured belt coding (ranking), punching repetitively in the air (it's a very droning, mind numbing activity, much like marching "left-right-left-right") as well as several modifications made to karate moves (further loss of fluidity etc). The yelling in martial arts has long been poetically defined as the expulsion of qi (or ki in Japanese). However, I have yet to see a scientific/medical explanation for this. As I mentioned on my web page, But why you would want to expel this energy is beyond me. Respiration is a very important feature of any strenuous physical activity. This is my theory on how yelling in martial arts was developed and why many schools continue to cling on to it: First of all, the human lung never holds more than 1/3 of its maximum capacity. Some people think that in order to improve respiration, that the lung should be used to higher capacity. If you ask very young children to breath out and in, they will often try to empty their lungs, and then breath in sharply to try to fill it up (of course, it is impossible for the lungs to be fully filled or emptied, even when you fully exhale, your lungs are still 10% full of gas). The notion is that if you exhale more carbon dioxide, you can inhale more oxygen. I disagree with this notion. Firstly, if you expend more time expelling gas, your blood starts to become deoxygenated (because you're not inhaling). Then when you do the sharp and _long_ inhale, you're not expelling the carbon dioxide building up in your blood. Secondly, even high intensive athletes such as swimmers and marathon runners do NOT breathe this way. You will not see Olympic runners like Cathy Freeman, as the starting gun fires, attempt to expell as much air as possible as she takes her first step, and then try to inhale sharply on the next step. Nor will you see Olympic swimmers like Ian Thorpe keep his face above water and try to fill his lungs as he swims a few strokes, and then stick his face under the water and blow out all the air in his lungs in a "kiai!"-like fashion that some martial artists do. No. Why? Well, as I'm sure you've figured out by now, it's a very inefficient way to use your lungs. This is where I fail to see the logic of screaming/exhaling sharply in martial arts -- it leads to a very inefficient gaseous exchange in your lungs. Athletic training does NOT make the athlete use more of their lungs. Olympians use their lungs in the same manner as you and I. The difference is that they use it more efficiently. This is the purpose of "Qi Gong," which is what we use in Praying Mantis as opposed to screaming. Qi Gong focusses on training the martial artist to breathe in a more controlled and efficient manner, thus using their lungs more efficiently. That way, you don't end up exhausted and out of breath within the early stages of a fight. If you do a mighty exhale (which is what yelling is, only vocalised), then you are no longer using your lungs in an efficient manner as described above.

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Replies:

  • Re: How to do Kip Ups -- Nolan, 18:09:46 08/16/02 Fri
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