With the evolution of mixed martial arts, practitioners all over the world have been crafting their styles with a simple, yet effective formula: begin with your base martial art, add in the development of martial arts that pertain to your area of weakness, add in proper strength and conditioning, add in proper nutrition, and the result, hopefully, is a well-rounded martial artist.

The days of style vs style matchups are essentially dead. When a ground fighter trained in the arts of Brazilian jiu jitsu or catch wrestling would like to get involved in the sport of mixed martial arts it is in their best interest to develop a solid striking game. This begs the question, with so many available options, where does one even begin?

Enter Sport Science. They have employed professional mixed martial artist Brandon Vera to help settle the long standing debate in the battle for the title of Most Effective Kick between the arts of Karate and Muay Thai.

Taking a non-biased look, sensors are placed throughout the area to be struck of the dummy as well as the striking area of Vera’s feet and shins to measure a variety of statistics including but not limited to: velocity, force, acceleration, and rotational velocity.

From simple observations it is clear that a karate style kick is seemingly faster than a muay thai style kick while the latter seems to impact with a greater amount of force. Thus the heated debate between practitioners which centers on the question: which is more EFFECTIVE, speed or power?

Through the course of this video we watch as Sport Science takes a step back, takes personal opinion out of the matter, and simply lets science take the measurements while you decide.

“>

Jacob C. Stevens is a lifelong athlete and cerebral martial arts enthusiast who is also skilled in the art of linguistic manipulation, his published work, Afterthoughts and Handgrenades, can be found here…