My argument is that if the head is off the ground the muscles of the neck can absorb some of the force of the blow. Having the head off the floor provides more opportunity for the blow to deflect off the skull reducing the force impacted by the strike. By yielding with the strike the period of the strike is increased this lowers the rate of acceleration of the brain in response to the strike so reducing shearing forces and tearing of tissue. If you head is on the floor your muscles cannot absorb any of the energy and there is little or no opportunity to deflect away any of the force. the moment of impact is very short resulting in a sudden acceleration of the brain increasing shear and tearing injuries. I understand the argument of cuop contra cuop injury as a result of head movement. but in my opinion having the head in contact with the floor means more force translated to the brain over shorter time period which leads to greater damage.
True having the head of the mat does leave openings for a lot of unpleasant things. but that was not the point in question. the point was what causes most damage to the brain. If you are on canvas or a mat with your head on the mat, the mat absorbs some of the reactive force between your head and the floor. Tragically not enough in the example of the fighter who died. Without a mat the reactive force is left to bounce around in the brain doing damage. Think of it another way. Having your head on or off the floor will not alter the energy of the strike. But it will alter the way that energy is dissipated. What you want is to dissipate the energy in a way that causes less harm.
So if I have an egg in a wooden box is the egg safer if I drop kick the box or stamp on the box when it's on the floor? So long as I don't physically break the box with the stamp the egg is safer with the stamp. As I said though...yielding with a blow and riding the shot is a good thing but a shot that rattles the brain has more room to do so when the head is free floating. When Iain Abernethy teaches elbow strikes from the clinch he stresses that the hand controlling and indexing the head needs to yield to the strike because holding it too strongly actually helps the opponent absorb the shot and stay conscious. But we're splitting hairs really. Getting hit in the head when you're on the floor is horrible in both cases.
I can vouch that if you get hit hard enough without moving your head while standing, especially if it's by somebody who is half a foot taller than you and weighs a good 50lbs or so more than and looks like an NFL linebacker with more fighting experience, it will rock your brain enough to knock you out. xD
My understanding is that on a hard surface you are more likely to suffer a skull injury if your head is touching it, which in extreme cases could result in skull fragments damaging the brain. If your head is lifted then some of that force is taken away but you will suffer more brain shake. The give of canvas will reduce likelihood of skull damage, but will not reduce brain shake in the same way. I don't train for being on canvas, but on concrete it's better to risk the brain shake than make it easier for someone to crush your skull with a stomp. It's important not to forget the old "equal and opposite reaction" stuff!
An explanation of impact / counter impact brain injury, known as coup contra coup. The brain is a squidgy mass inside the skull. When the skull is struck the head begins to move. The mass of the brain has inertia and stays put. This results in the skull squishing the brain on the side of the impact and stretching the brain on the side opposite the impact. The squishing of the brain imparts momentum to the mass of the brain. It begins to move. Meanwhile the skull stops moving. The brain continues to move inside the skull squishing the brain against the skull on the side opposite the initial impact and stretching the brain on the side of the initial impact. The brain then bounces back the way it came. Resulting in further injury until the energy of the initial impact is dissipated and the brain stops moving. This is made worse when the strike puts a rotational spin on the skull. E.g an upward strike to the chin. This makes the brain spin causing additional tearing squishing damage.
But if you have to choose, that is still better than skull fragments tearing through brain tissue and blood vessels. Oh, and just for reference, it is coup countrecoup.
If you are standing and struck in the head - you want to keep your chin tucked and resist as much forced rotational movement as possible. It is a fairly simple solution to a fairly simple problem (in terms of physics and force and bio-mechanics)
Not necessarily. The natural reaction of rotating away from the strike can reduce the energy imparted by the strike significantly... if you are quick enough.
I dont disagree with you , thats why I said forced movement - maybe I should have said involuntary movement under the influence of the strike. any way we are both digressing. - back to head on floor.
i am with David Harrison on the head of the floor thing. Others are not. I am entirely open to changing my understanding if that would be a better thing for my students. For me the problem comes down to how does the skull transfer the energy of a strike when it is in contact with the ground? How much does the skull protect the brain by transferring the energy of impact into the ground and how much does it harm the brain by containing the shock waves of reaction forces within the brain causing greater damage? David Harrisons point about stomps to the head is also a good one. It could be that weather it is better to have the head on the floor or off it depends on the force of the strike. Clearly if the strike brakes the structural integraty of the skull having your head on the floor would be very bad news.
Forearm strikes too. Anything with bodyweight where the force is travelling perpendicular to the ground.
I'm a bit concerned about my brain health... not super concerned, but a bit. My wife is more concerned, especially with the thought that I may someday try amateur bouts of Muay Thai or MMA. My concern isn't a handful of amateur bouts really (though maybe it should be?), but rather on much more minor trauma building up over time from training. E.g., the other day we were doing a drill at Muay Thai where my partner attacks with a punching combo (no pads, just gloves). I as the defender can use whatever defense I want (parry/block/slip/whatever), the focus was on the attacker in the drill. For 2 drills towards the end I was getting tired and just anchored my gloves to my forehead with my chin down and absorbed shots on them (and the arm shield block for hooks). My partner was using moderate power. By the end of those 2 drills I had a very minor headache. It went away within about 20 minutes. Now, the headache itself was not a problem, not even to the level of mildly annoying, it was really, really light. But it makes me wonder whether I did some very minor damage to my brain. I've been knocked out a few times when I was a kid (maybe at 9 years old and again at maybe 13 years old), but not as an adult. I sometimes wonder whether training for years, blocking/absorbing lots of shots to the head, even at low to moderate power, how much that is going to impact my brain health over time. I'm guessing the impact of a blocked/absorbed shot on the brain is probably bit more impact than a soccer ball being headed? (I read upthread that soccer players may be at risk for TBI?)
In January research started on the link between repeated heading a soccer ball and dementia, following a BBC television documentary about TBI by former England captain Alan Shearer.
Headaches are not a good sign. I would say don't let tiredness be an excuse and always slip/parry/deflect. If your gloves are in contact with your head, they are not doing much to protect you from momentum being transferred to your brain. I don't know how you are coached and if my advice could fit into your training, but using limbs as a shield is a last-ditched line of defence for me.
It depends on what we are doing of course, but typically we always block hooks by placing a palm on the back of our head/neck with our forearm & upper arm protecting the head. First image I found for it: I think it was mostly the hooks that gave me a headache--my partner was throwing them harder than his straight punches.
The way it was explained to me is if you take an egg and violently shake it, the inside is going to be scrambled. If you cover another egg with a pad and shake it, it's going to be scrambled as well. It's the same effect with the brain.
It depends if the cover is deflecting or static. Obviously I don't know, but I would hazard a guess that the straights would have shaken your brain more, even if they felt less powerful, if you were moving and deflecting with the hook defences. Here is a good example from MAP's own jwt and Hannibal. You can see that Hannibal is not just blocking the full force of the punch (if it were full power punches), but he is using rotation on two planes to take force out of the strikes (around 3 minutes in, it is against simulated untrained haymakers, but the defence principle is the same for proper hooks):
