Martial arts striking hand peak acceleration, accuracy and consistency

Abstract

The goal of this paper was to investigate the possible trade-off between peak hand acceleration and accuracy and consistency of hand strikes performed by martial artists of different training experiences. Ten male martial artists with training experience ranging from one to nine years volunteered to participate in the experiment. Each participant performed 12 maximum effort goal-directed strikes. Hand acceleration during the strikes was obtained using a tri-axial accelerometer block. A pressure sensor matrix was used to determine the accuracy and consistency of the strikes. Accuracy was estimated by the radial distance between the centroid of each subject's 12 strikes and the target, whereas consistency was estimated by the square root of the 12 strikes mean squared distance from their centroid. We found that training experience was significantly correlated to hand peak acceleration prior to impact (r2=0.456, p =0.032) and accuracy (r2=0. 621, p=0.012). These correlations suggest that more experienced participants exhibited higher hand peak accelerations and at the same time were more accurate. Training experience, however, was not correlated to consistency (r2=0.085, p=0.413). Overall, our results suggest that martial arts training may lead practitioners to achieve higher striking hand accelerations with better accuracy and no change in striking consistency.