More on centerline

A while back we had a discussion about the centerline and the targets co-located on it. Dr. Rowe sent this along and those are his words in the first paragraph.

http://wcats.com/WCLessons/Lectures/LectureI.php

The entire registry contains only 183 cases and the average age of the victim is 14 years. The majority are young children and there are few older teens or adults. Most authorities believe that the thickening of the sternum and chest wall in the adult protects the heart from direct trauma. I agree having been in the chest, particularly moving thru the mediastinum to remove pediatric mediastinal tumors that the vagus nerve, aorta and heart and the related structure are deep and well protected from most blunt trauma. However the was a TV series recently that measure the power generated by martial arts strike and kicks.

From Series
"We took the dummy and put in sensors that would be more appropriate for the application of martial artists."
These so-called load-cell sensors were placed in strategic areas on the dummy, such as the upper neck, lower neck, chest, and knee.Another device called a potentiometer was placed in the dummy's chest to measure displacement caused by a frontal strike.
The fighters themselves were fitted with reflective markers and sensors in their shoes that allowed scientists to track and create computer animations of how the body generates each attack.
More Powerful Than a Sledgehammer
In one experiment, experts in karate, boxing, kung fu, and tae kwon do all took turns striking the dummy in the face.The researchers were surprised to find that boxing is the fighting style capable of delivering the most force in a single punch.
Boxer Steve Petramale delivered about 1,000 pounds (453.6 kilograms) of impact force, the equivalent of swinging a sledgehammer into someone's face.His punch, the sensors revealed, starts in the feet and travels up the legs through the hips to the chest and shoulders, multiplying in force as it travels up the body.
The tae kwon do spinning back kick delivered more than 1,500 pounds (680.4 kilograms) of force, while the kung fu flying double kick produced about 1,000 pounds (453.6 kilograms) of force.
Melchor Menor, a former two-time Muay Thai world champion, uses a simple technique to incapacitate his opponents: a knee to the chest at close quarters.Menor himself was surprised at how powerful this move can be. "I wasn't expecting to have the highest force. When he said the power of the knee [kick] was equal to the power of a 35-mile-an-hour [56.3-kilometer-an-hour] car crash, it was humbling." The displacement sensor in the dummy's chest measured nearly two inches (five centimeters) of chest compression from Menor's knee strike. Like the boxer's punch, the energy from this kick starts from the feet and moves up to the knee. The blow is delivered to the soft tissue below the rib cage while Menor holds his opponent's head stationary. The ribs are driven backward through the lungs and solar plexus, a cluster of nerve cells behind the human stomach that controls some organ functions.
Truly a death blow, Menor's knee kick can cause internal bleeding and even cardiac arrest.

Interesting question

One of my Chicago guys, Tony Velada, sent me a link written by a kung-fu stylist about the "centerline". As all you martial artists know, we are always talking about it - what it is and where, how to protect it, how it moves, and how to control it. The article was accurate and had good detail from the internal arts point of view. I forwarded it to many of my students and former students. One of the people I sent it to is Craig Jacobus and chiropractor now living in Nebraska and teaching emergency medicine. Craig was a paramedic when I met him way back in the 70's or early 80's and went off to med school. I'd like to share his comments on the centerline as related to Western medicine, with a slant toward emergency medicine.

The concept of Centerline, as it is described can be related to what we call in trauma the "box of death". It is the mediastinal area, as you know. The middle of the chest that contains the vital organs- heart, lungs, aorta, sup/inf vena cava and of course the vagus nerve. Cranial nerve 10/ vagus nerve, "operates" the workings of a good part of the 'automatic'/ autonomic nervous system. Striking a target that is innervated by the vagus nerve (many) can cause anything from a very slow almost imperceptible heart rate to unconsciousness to multiple organic failures.
From the medical perspective, most all of the article makes sense. Coupling that with my meager early training in acupuncture, admittedly just enough so I was not ignorant but not enough to practice it, the points correlate. But the healing arts of thousands of years are still being understood and hard to correlate with our current system of only a 150 years or so.
Take care guys,
Craig Jacobus

The original link for the article is below.
http://www.kung-fu.se/centerline.htm

Thanks to you guys for the questions and participation.