wait!! before you go off into the darkness!!
just a view from the other side, so to speak. what if the standard were, as it is in most places, that you throw face thrusts with force? not as much force as you would throw at the body, but force nonetheless. as has been described here, a stiff jab. also, if someone gets hit with a face thrust and calls it light i have more faith in our fighting communitity than to think the next one will be this out of control and overly hard follow up. at least when ive had/seen face thrusts called light ive never witnessed the next one being one of these fabled "it lifted me off my feet and threw me back 20'" kind of superhero blows.
i disagree with your fear of face thrusts being unsafe or with the notion that the verterbrae are fragile, weak things. i do so coming from nearly 20 years in a kingdom that has always thrown stout face thrusts (and never hearing about any injury. i also feel that way as a retired boxer. in boxing i would say half of the shots i took straight (jabs, straights) were twice as hard as any thrust ive ever received and the rest as hard if not harder. our heads can get rocked without damage.
i dont think we can ever legislate safety with face thrusts nor do i feel they are unsafe. but there are a ton of factors involved (helm fit/size/strapping, body movement, being all amped up, slipping, weapons failure, etc) that can dramatically change the level of force applied. i dont see us regulating equipment to an acceptable standard so we will continue to see crappy, ill fitted, helms on the field with tie behind the head thongs for chinstraps. so how do we do it safely?
well, the same we have for so many years. we rely on each other not to injure our friends. if a fighter lacks control and is knocking peoples head "off their shoulders" pull him aside and remind him that he is in charge of his opponents safety. if he continues to harm people then deal with him in other ways.
it can be done safely, and has for years. if a kingdom wants to fight with a touch kill condition i guess they should, but dont put that on the rest of us when we meet outside of your zip code. regardless of who is doing what on the field the important thing to remember is that we all get to go home in one piece. it is what seperates us from most other sports.
regards
logan
Uilleam MacUilleam/Waffle wrote:Ok folks, this is becoming an equine autopsy for me. So, I am going to do one more bit of commentary and then return to my normal lurking from a dark corner.
The general consensus of commentary seems to be that face thrusts, as done at this time, are essentially safe. No argument, they are. The contentions seem to be what is hard enough, or too hard, in regards to the potential for injury, and whether the call of "light" is appropriate in relation to a face thrust.
By now, you all know I am a propionate of the touch kill standard, and most of you should have figured out why, safety.
When the basic rules for heavy combat were first being developed, two of the rules were: no intentional striking of the hands and no striking the knee and below. The reasons were pretty obvious. The armor required at the time did not protect either area enough to keep fingers from being broken, or knees from being blown out. As armor evolved the armor required to protect these areas was increased until we have the standards we have today. Even though the protection afforded these areas is now at a point to where the potential for significant damage is remote both the hands, and the knees and below, are still restricted areas. Why? It is because, the inherent weaknesses in the structure of these joints, even now, make it easier for the hands and the knees to sustain injury than most of the other areas of the body. So it is with the cervical area of the neck, which is just as weak, if not weaker in its structure as that of the hands and knees. Even if current standards provide for more than adequate protection why take a chance on injury beyond what is necessary to know that defenses have been penetrated and the blow has been struck.
The bottom line comes to this. If a fighter has the ability to call a face thrust "light" then they have to be hit harder in the face for the blow to be called good. The normal reaction is to "crank it up" to make sure the next one gets called. Even if a fighter intends to only turn it up a little bit, in the heat of battle, and adrenaline being what it is, what seems to be a little bit can easily become an exponential (I know Zafir al-Th'ib likes that word) increase in force. Which also increases the possibility of injury. It is not worth taking the chance of a neck injury just because a fighter is not sure the thrust would have actually reached they’re face and done damage or not.
Thanks for the discussion. Never can tell when I will come out of the darkness.
Uilleam
(Waffle)
