Tracy's Kenpo Karate of Shreveport, La

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What is Kodawari? Kodawari means the pursuit of perfection. It is passion, persistence, commitment, and attention to detail. But it is so much more than that.

It wasn’t a particularly hard hit, as hits in the NFL go. Damar Hamlin wrapped both arms around Tee Higgins, and in doing so, took a hit to the left side of his chest with the side of Higgins’ helmet and right shoulder. He struggled for the ball for a second when they both went down, then stood up, suffered cardiac arrest and collapsed.

The Buffalo Bills have released a statement saying that Hamlin’s heart was healthy before the hit, so what gives?

Commotio Cordis, or “agitation of the heart,” is ventricle fibrillation (v-fib) caused often by impact to the chest. Specifically, it is “sudden arrhythmic death caused by a low/mild chest wall impact.” Note that in the definition, “death” refers to the rhythm of the heart stopping, not the death of the person. Another definition says, “ventricular fibrillation triggered by chest impact-induced abnormalities in repolarization.

The phenomenon is seen most often in adolescent baseball, where kids between 8-18 get hit on the left chest wall by a baseball.

Ventricular fibrillation is the most common cause of sudden cardiac death. V-fib is an irregular heart rhythm in which the lower chambers of the heart contract in a rapid un-rhythmic manner, resulting in the heart not pumping enough blood to the rest of the body. CPR using rhythmic compressions is an attempt to reset the rhythm. An AED (automated external defibrillator) attempts to reset the rhythm with electric shock that temporarily stops the heart. I don’t mean to sound like I am making light of this, but think of an AED as “turning it off and back on again.”

Coming back around to commotio cordis, a moderate impact to the chest wall (cordium) over the heart muscle at the right time during a heartbeat cycle can disrupt the rhythm, cause v-fib and cardiac arrest.

There is evidence that it can be steroid induced. And currently “COVID vaccines cause heart attacks” is making the rounds, but the vaccines are associated with POTS, which is a tachycardia rather than an arrhythmia.

Damar Hamlin took a moderate hit to the left chest wall, and suffered cardiac arrest. While I guess other causes or comorbidities can’t be ruled out, the fact is that this single shot could have caused it, this is what we saw happen, and this is my focus here, as I turn towards the martial arts.

This horrifying, traumatic, ACCIDENTAL event causes me to take a good hard look at kenpo techniques and the potential lethality of what we do, what we teach and what and how we practice on others. I have been hit hard in the chest while drilling techniques or combinations with partners. I have been nailed while sparring to the same location. I’ve been dropped, and I’ve dropped my share of partners. But, what if?

What if just one of those strikes or kicks had accidentally made contact at just the right moment in a heartbeat cycle?

As practitioners, and especially as teachers, we owe it to our partners and our students to make sure that we understand the potential effects of the techniques that we use and teach, and that we pass that information on.

There are instructors in the Tracy System who have spent decades studying the potential effects of the targets that we exploit within our self-defense techniques, and I have been in more than one seminar or class where such a teacher, listening to the class have too much fun or be too lax with a drill, stop the class and literally yell at the students, “This is not a game! These techniques can KILL. Pay attention to what you’re doing!”

Do you believe that? This was not a mystical qi/ki/chi strike. Damar Hamlin was hit with a normal NFL shot, and as of this writing, he is still in critical condition and could very well die. And again, not to make light of this at all, but being hit in a way that seems normal and dying a day or two later is the very definition of the “delayed death touch,” and nobody believes that. But we just saw it happen in a football game, and statistics show that children die from similar blows playing baseball, lacrosse, etc.

There’s no pressure point here to exploit. There are, of course, several in the area, but this is not a pressure point strike. It is a general strike to the muscle wall outside the heart and its effect is based entirely on a timing that we (as strikers) have no way of knowing. We can’t time a heartbeat cycle, so we have no way of intentionally causing this phenomenon.

BUT, we can’t time a strike SAFELY, either. Equipment? Gloves? Helpful, sure. But Higgins’ right PADDED shoulder hit Hamlin’s left PADDED chest. As an occupational safety professional, I know that we can never deem something safe, we can only mitigate risk and choose actions based on a perceived degree of safety, which is subjective to the individual.

So, what is my point? Here is what I am looking at:

1. As a self-defense instructor, I am evaluating ALL of my techniques to determine where this strike is available or used. I need to know where it is, and I need alternatives.

2. As a self-defense instructor, I want my students to know that this is a potentially lethal strike that requires only moderate force, a fairly large target area, with an effect that is not determined by the person executing the strike. If you are in a life or death situation, and you feel the necessity to try it, don’t count on it.

3. As a martial arts instructor, I want my students to know how to protect their training partners, and to not count on “not hitting hard” to negate the potential lethality of a strike to this area.

4. What’s the liability? The effect is out of our control, but if we are aware of the potential, and do it anyway…?

Control is key. In industry, you cannot control exposure to a risk until the risk is evaluated and understood. Then, the hierarchy of control (slightly modified to fit martial arts or sports) is:

1. Elimination, replacement or substitution of the cause of risk. In our case, eliminate by not making contact, replace or substitute by choosing another target.

2. Engineering controls. Change the process to mitigate risk. In our case, the process is the technique. What other techniques work in this situation that don’t use the same target? Block from outside the punch, use limb destructions rather center-line destruction.

3. Work practices. Limit exposure potential by changing the ex*****on or practice of the work. In our case, use heavy bags, have our partners hold focus mitts. Good partners know how to simulate the correct attack direction and target location by how and where they hold the pads, even though they are hit only on arms or hands.

4. PPE (personal protective equipment). In industry, this is the last resort. All PPE offers limited protection. Firefighters cannot hang out indefinitely in a burning building because of their suits. Cops aren’t invincible behind Kevlar. Your balls still hurt even if you’re wearing a cup. You can get knocked out with a head shot even if you have head gear and your sparring partner has gloves. As a matter of fact, read the disclaimer on your sparring gear from Century. It’s designed for “no contact.” Specifically, it is designed to offer some protection in the event of incidental, accidental contact.

One more thing. Instructors, school owners…do you have an AED at your dojo? Do you and/or your instructors know CPR? In a sudden cardiac arrest event, use of an AED within 3-4 minutes increases survival rates to 60-70%. Waiting for EMS to arrive and shock the heart results in about a 43% chance of survival. Bystander CPR alone results in about a 12% survival rate. That said, it is important to use the rhythmic compressions of CPR while the AED is evaluating heart rhythm and charging to shock. I won’t get into specifics here, you really need to take a course on that.

To summarize, a moderate strike to the chest wall surrounding the heart may or may not have lethal effects on your opponent or your training partner. Those effects have nothing to do with your intent, the strength or fitness level of either you or your opponent, or the condition of the person’s heart who receives the strike. It is based on where within the heartbeat cycle the person’s heart is when the impact occurs. Understand it. Know it’s limits, know how to avoid it, and if you teach or operate a school, consider investing in the tools to respond to such an incident.

We have hundreds of techniques that exploit vulnerabilities on the body ranging from pain to death. This is a single target among many. We should invest in the tools to understand the effects of our actions that we take in self-defense and in training for self-defense.

Timing matters.

bro really wasted his finisher.

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