平安

So because parkour is such a ridiculously male dominated sport, the "correct technique" for a lot of these movements that you're taught when you become an instructor plays to a male body's strengths: upper body strength, higher center of gravity, etc.

She demolishes this course by moving in ways that make sense for her body. She doesn't muscle her way up to her over a wall, she just throws a leg up over the wall. She doesn't use upper body strength to do the salmon ladder, she uses her hips!!! And it's fucking incredible.

So many girls and young women walk away from parkour because every movement caters to the strengths of men, because doing what makes sense for their bodies is seen as "bad technique" to be trained away.

Like, that salmon ladder omg??? Any male trainer who wasn't willing to work with a person's distinct strengths would tell her she should hang by her arms and go up one rung at a time. But she uses her core strength to go from being above the bar to swinging and using momentum to move it up FOUR RUNGS and then in an equally smooth move across to the other side.

She probably wouldn't be able to finish this course if she stuck to the "correct" way of doing things, but she's doing them in ways that allows her to use her strength to her advantage, and so she fuckin demolishes it.

from a physics perspective, that means all the force he’s applying is concentrated at the point of contact between his sword’s edge and the target, and it moves at just the speed that breakage propogates through the material. too slow and it wouldn’t have enough force; too fast and he’d get ahead of the break, shoving the target over instead of cutting it.

Everything moves in synch with the master. He’s got perfect technique, or near to it. Most of the others don’t, and are trying to compensate with more snap in their wrists or more force, trying to muscle their way through it. They’re largely trying to cut with the motion of arms and shoulders, rather than their whole body.

Ka'imi Kuoha 

Cheek: a round dull pain that clocks your entire head in a different direction. It’s painful and throbs but the main effect of a punch to the cheek is how jarring it is. You feel it in your mouth, your teeth. And no matter how you position that punch the knuckles will always hit the jaw and cheek bones adding a frame of sharp pain in which the redness will be painted.

Temple: getting hit on the temple pushes your head to the side rather than turning it. It’s disorienting because it leaves you very off balance. It essentially feels like a bad pressure headache, like when you have a sinus infection on a plane, but in one spot and on the outside. It’s sharp in the middle and radiates outward and even after the initial impact it pulses like an earthquake epicenter. It easily causes long lasting headaches and is the most likely of these examples to cause a concussion.

Eye: this is a weird one. The fist doesn’t fit within the eye socket so either the knuckles on the brow and cheeks bones protect the actual eye or they don’t. The former option gives a full spreading pain below the eye which results in the classic black eye look and a sharp pain on your brow similar to hitting your shin on the couch. The latter option, well bad things can happen when a hard fast object makes direct contact with your eye but for the sake of this it feels like a vacuum bc the concave shape is being covered and pressurized. The eye feels pushed back and pulled forward all at once. It doesn’t necessarily hurt that bad for that long unless the punch was meant to do damage. I’m fortunate to say I don’t know what it would feel like then.

Nose: remember that prank kids used to pull where they’d line up their hands with their nose, push them in one direction and crack a knuckle at the same time to pretend to break their nose? Yeah that’s what it looks like when someone punches you from the side in the nose, except it’s someone else’s hand and your nose makes the sound instead of their knuckle. It’s just like breaking any bone where you hear it and feel the action if it being done but that moment of shock blankets you for a split second until all the pain comes rushing back. It’s sharp and needlelike and can give you black eyes just to add insult to injury. If you get hit in the nose from the front it’s like the uncomfortableness of when you have to sneeze but can’t. Except that feeling took all the steroids and is now using your face as a punching bag to express its roid rage. It crackles outward like static electricity under your skin, your eyesight gets fuzzy and you can’t tell if it’s because you’re tearing up, it’s hard to open your eyes, or you’re momentarily stunned and blinded. Just know it’s all three. I find that this one knocks the wind out of you the most. Gotta remind yourself to breathe just don’t try to do it through your nose.

If you really want to know what this feels like I’d suggest joining a mixed martial arts because they’ll teach you correct form and power distribution and you can spar with pads and actually hit each other.

Well, too bad you're getting some....

Forms? Kata? Anyos? Poomsae?

MMmmmmm… no thanks.