Iron Crotches

Kotaku recently featured a performance during some martial arts demonstration in China. This video which was also shown on the article displays the skill. I have an interest in these things; in fact, if things had gone differently I might be right up on stage doing a variant. 

This is not a put-down of the performance. I hate to rag on a martial arts performance, I consider it the province of internet trolls and armchair practitioners. This post is not a commentary meant to drag down the practitioner on the video. This is, rather, an analysis of what he's possibly doing, in the interest of learning something important to my own practice. I hope that's clear and no misunderstandings will be had.

Leaving aside techniques like hiding padding under the uniform or having an actual castrated person do the thing. We can see that the contraption they built is very unstable; it needs people to hold on to the supports, the poles are not sunk into the ground, the weight is suspended via chains. The weight as a result would be moved back by the opposing force as it hits the guy. The lack of rigidity means only a fraction of the potential force will be passed on to the target, like if you punched someone with a limp wrist.

The person moving the weight also isn't imparting much force with the weight. He's jumping up and down, rather than driving off with one leg into a falling step.

Notice also that the weight acts like a pendulum. If the bricks had instead fallen down vertically, 100% of the force from the weight of the bricks would be transferred. Since the bricks move horizontally we're lucky if we even get half of that. The surface contacting the body once the hit happens is pretty big, that also serves to further reduce the damage from impact. And also the weight hits the guy on the upswing, when the weight would surely be losing momentum...

In another place you could say this is illegal, but we're talking about martial arts - "cheating" like this, where you try to maximize the advantages available to you, is perfectly acceptable. The highest level of martial arts is cheating and dirty fighting, basically anything that lets you win with minimum effort and injury.

Regarding what the performer is himself doing, and this is what interests me very much, he moves to meet the weight. This further reduces the force that gets transmitted to him. Moving laterally would be too obvious, and anyway he can't move too far in that direction on account of the stance he's in. I think there's a slight downward vector to his movement, like he's sinking down as well as moving forward. I believe that's what allows him to generate the power necessary to snuff out the force coming at him. The same concept was taught to me actually - meeting an attack - and it wouldn't be strange if other CMA schools knew about this.

I say he's only sinking and not rooting because in the case of the latter he would not have needed to move his legs. Moving the legs by the way allows him to "vent" force he can't absorb. He takes the hit with his pelvis and pubic bone - this still could be a source of injury, so I'm sure he trained to toughen those areas enough. Next time I play with push-hands I'm going to try "venting" the force and changing the target.

So then, is that all there is to know about Iron Crotch? Not at all; these combat skills are pretty deep. The one who taught my current teacher, he could draw up his testicles into his body. This was verified by my teacher and at least two others; when using the skill his scrotum did not feel like it had testicles in them. This master completed the training long ago, but he was still able to have children.  What's more, he taught the training method to gain this ability. I'm too afraid to practice it though, given what I know now about testicular torsion. I do not want to gamble that way.