Last night my friends visited me. One guy asked if I still train MA and I said yes. Since he had some Kempo Karate training, we soon got into MA discussion. I mentioned "rhino guard" and he wanted to know more detail. I put up my "rhino guard", aimed his chest, and asked him to punch my face. He asked, "What kind of punch?" I said, "Any punch, as fast as you can, and as powerful as you can". He threw a fast and powerful straight punch toward my face. I raised my "rhino guard" and met with his punch. Something happened. His fist meets my fist with knuckles on knuckles. He suddenly pulled his punch back, used his other hand to hold on his punching hand, and asked me for some ice. I then found out that when his fist met my fist, he broke one of his finger. This had never happened to me before. I don't even know this is even possible. Do you have this kind of experience that "your fist meets your opponent's fist" right in the thin air? What's the possibility that this could happen in reality?
Had it happen a couple of times , mainly in drills , but occasionally in sparring , it usually ends with both parties shaking their hands saying "crikey ! that smarts!" , or words that effect
I'd say that there is a fairly high risk of hitting your training partner's elbows with a raised guard. When I do guntings I take a great deal of care even when my training partner has gloved hands. The hands are so delicate. Here's Ruth and Unreal Combat at the 2016 MAP Meet doing limb destructions.
Bone on bone hits can go either way, but IME the one that can absorb the hit better usually comes out on top. I'm not sure the physics involved but it seems to me that the one able to align their center of mass behind the contact point will be able to absorb the hit better. For example, if receiving a strike on your elbow (see Simon's post of "Ruth and Unreal Combat at the 2016 MAP Meet doing limb destructions"), the target is your face. Put your elbow where your face WAS and align the center of your mass behind it. Absorb the hit. Note that I think most of the gunting done while receiving hits should be done this way. I've tried unsuccessfully in the past to redirect strikes into my elbow... this is very low percentage IMHO. Higher percentage is to put the elbow along the line of attack (e.g., cover up and move the few inches so the elbow is where your head used to be. Another example, if striking to hit your opponent on a bone on bone hit, do not allow them to get their center of mass behind the target area. I've had more success with rakes. For example slicing elbows to cut open the face. Knuckle rakes to cut open the opponent's knuckles (bare fisted). It requires that the target area is not moving relative to your strikes, otherwise the rake probably will miss. Get your mass behind your raking motion while the angle of attack makes it difficult for the opponent to absorb the hit since it is not towards their center of mass.
Depends on the angle of the strike and area. It's all math really; force vectors and loading patterns, shearing strain and shearing stress, tensile strength and tensile stress, and material properties. The bones of the hand have. Very small cross section and it's very easy to hit a bigger diameter bone at the wrong angle. If you meet fist to fist on the exact same angle it ends up being a matter of whose bone is denser. Usually someone will have a better angle though.
No idea what the odds are but I'm sure it has happened more than once in the real world. I've known a couple people who punched themselves in the head while sparring-don't ask me how.But that's gotta be rarer than two fists meeting in flight. A primary theoretical purpose of Hsing-I's Drilling Fist is meant to strike the opponents incoming hand,you only Fall and Overturn when you miss.
I'd bet money that your knuckle hit his proximal phalange. Possibly your fist was under more tension at the moment of impact too. I very much doubt it's the case that your hand is simply harder than his.
