Where’s the Chi?
by Richard Ryan

Historical claims of martial arts masters manifesting chi energy may have stemmed from instances in which they accessed their normally unused mental and physical powers, says Richard Ryan (right). - PHOTO BY RICK HUSTEAD

Promoters of the first karate tournaments in the United States were worried. They believed that techniques were so deadly that if they allowed fighters to compete full contact, it could result in severe injury or death. They believed that martial artists possessed speed and power that were superior to the abilities of practitioners of other forms of hand-to-hand combat.

Even after Jhoon Rhee introduced his revolutionary sparring gear in the early 1970s, many believed that full-power karate techniques were too risky for sport fighting. For a time, hard contact was allowed only to the body, with light contact permitted to the head.

Of course, that didn’t last long. Guys like Joe Lewis and Bill Wallace did it anyway, and full-contact karate and kickboxing were born.

Fast-forward several decades. Top competitors now enter a padded metal cage with nothing more than a pair of light gloves and a cup. They proceed to pound away at each other, aiming at vulnerable areas and striking with maximum force. The results are knockouts, bloody wounds and submissions, but so far no deaths.

Where are all those lethal techniques? Where’s the devastating power supposedly possessed by trained martial artists? And where’s the chi masters claim they can generate?

If you’ve studied any traditional art, you’ve no doubt been exposed to the term. Whether it’s rendered as chi by the Chinese, ki by the Japanese and Koreans or prana by the Indians, it refers to the power inherent in all living things, one that martial artists can channel in combat. Almost every ancient culture harbors some version of chi, touting it as an invisible force that everyone has but few can master.

During the early years of the martial arts in America, almost every article and book mentioned this mysterious force. It was whispered that a master of chi could kill with a single blow and heal with a single touch. It could be projected at will and make people impervious to injury. Purveyors of the force were said to be able to absorb full-power blows to vital targets without injury—we’ve all seen demonstrations of people taking shots to the neck and groin. With the aid of strong chi, they claimed, masters could pulverize bricks and roof tiles with their bare hands.

So where’s the chi in cage matches? It would seem that if you were a mixed martial artist, you’d benefit from being able to harness your internal energy. You could summon it to stop head punches or make your neck impervious to choke holds. But chi is nowhere to be found.

What happened? Were the martial arts masters of old superior to those of today? Did we run out of chi, or have the secrets of internal energy somehow been lost on our generation?

It really boils down to a more fundamental question: Is there an unseen energy force that human beings can call on to gain superhuman powers? As of now, no proof of chi exists, at least not in the form described by martial artists. No one has ever summoned such powers in laboratory conditions or demonstrated it in the ring.

Does that mean chi doesn’t exist? Not necessarily. It depends on your definition and perspective. Having an abiding interest in human performance, I keep a file of articles about human responses to high stress. In it are stories of people who did extraordinary things that defy explanation. Everyone’s heard reports of the 80-year-old grandmother who lifted a car off her grandson and the father who ripped a car door from its hinges to save his daughter from burning to death. Although rare, these occurrences prove that human beings can do incredible things in extreme situations, and that may be the origin of the concept of chi.

Scientists claim that we use only a fraction of our mental and physical abilities; the majority of our potential lies dormant. That means we’re capable of incredible feats, but until we unlock the secrets to this potential, it’ll remain dormant—unless, of course, we call on it in an extreme situation. We tend to underestimate human ability, and when someone exceeds conventional boundaries, we want to give the explanation a label, like “chi.” That doesn’t automatically classify it as metaphysical or beyond the realm of science.

Consider the art of breaking as an example. For decades, martial artists have demonstrated the ability to break almost anything. They’ve kicked, punched and otherwise smashed their way through everything from bricks to blocks of ice. Some would argue that this is proof of chi: Surely, these martial artists are summoning a force that lesser mortals don’t possess, right? If you believe in chi, you might agree. Then again, some people break things that we don’t consider easy to break, but the operative words here are “some people.”

Take the average person and ask him to smash a stack of boards. In most cases, you’ll be sending him to the emergency room, but when you investigate human physiology and rudimentary physics, such feats no longer seem so superhuman. Human bone is stronger than some forms of steel and much more flexible. The amount of force a person can generate with proper speed and leverage exceeds the resistance offered by many types of wood, brick and ice. Add years of conditioning and mental focus, and you have someone fully capable of breaking such materials with different parts of his body.

Like all of nature’s creatures, we’re a strange amalgam of strong and weak, vulnerable and resilient. Break your hand on a board, and some people will argue that your chi wasn’t developed enough. Others will say you probably hit it at the wrong angle or tried to break a material that exceeded the limits of your striking skill. Such abilities always have definable limits. After having been exposed to the construction business, I guarantee I can find a board or brick no one can break.

Perhaps it’s time to redefine chi. Instead of thinking of it as some mysterious invisible power, how about calling it a manifestation of human potential within the limits of physical law? I admit that doesn’t have the same ring as “internal energy,” but it allows the martial scientist in me to sleep a whole lot better.

About the author: Richard Ryan is the founder of the Dynamic Combat Method and co-founder of Integrated Combative Arts Training. For more information, visit http://www.blackbeltmag.com and click on Community, then Black Belt Authors.