Charlotte DeBel
White Queen of KMC
Well, chi is a common excuse for the uber-MA stuff in fiction. In comics chi manipulations are often legitimate superpower (the examples of it are Shang Chi and Iron Fist in Marvel). You can affect your physical performance by affecting your spiritual energy (meditation and breathing exercises- I've never tried meditation myself so I can't tell how effective it is in the real life, but breathing exercises is a decent substitute for patented painkillers at least (that's truth). In comics such stuff is glorified and turned into superpower- as legitimate as many other ridiculous stuff...
And now there's some myth-busting.
However it does happen and will continue to happen but it shouldn't I have seen guys who have black belts get decimated in a pub fight by someone who has virtually no skill at all but is a hell of a lot bigger and an out an out brawler.
Learning martial arts and learning how to fight are two different things. Some people just study martial arts like some sort of ballet dance or gymnastics. Also some martial arts are reduced just to ballet-like Kata in their modern form.
In real battle you fight on instinct and intuition (nothing like famous "berserk rage", since you still have to think over your strategy and tactics)- you don't think how to throw a particular punch or kick, or even how to aim at your target (that would be ridiculous). Real fighter does that on instinct and muscle memory. Instinct, adrenaline- and in the same time you should keep your mind clear to avoid wrong steps.
It's no wonder that a guy who studied capoeira but never learnt how to fight effectively lost to a determined big guy with a crowbar.
Being a martial arts student doesn't mean that you're a good fighter by default.
Myth number two. Lifting strength and the force of hit is the same.
That's particularly maddening myth. First of all, big biceps look cool but in reality the bigger your biceps are, the more they weaken your overall fighting ability. In real fight it's almost unnecessary group of muscles, and in fighting-oriented muscle developpment biceps are often less developed that the muscles which serve for propulsion of the hand thus affecting the force of the blow.
For example, when Bruce Lee started his carreer as a movie star, he has to develop good biceps to look cool at the screen but that decreased his overall fighting ability to the some point. And while he was barely able to lift 70 kg, he was able to punch people almost twice as bigger as he (for those who don't know, Bruce was a man of relatively small stature, just 152 cm- I'm only two inches taller than that (157 cm) but I've never had major problems with my small stature since I'm a girl (a guy with my height would be close to be nicknamed a midget)) all across arena. His One Inch
"chi" punch was later incorporated into the fighting style of one of my favourite fictional characters but that's an offtopic.
If the body is trained for hand-to-hand fighting, then the biceps aren't the most developed group of the muscles in the body. So if they have relatively decent weightliifting feats that would just mean that the "nessesary" muscles are even stronger. That without the things like moving speed, chi manipulation, "supporting" superpowers come into play.
But superstrong guys should always hit strong (even if they haven't got the proper muscles development)- all their muscles are superstrong (but sometimes the hits are only quarter as strong as you can think judging by their lifting feats). That's why Spidey is able to cause serious damage even though his "fighting" is an acrobatical performance for the most part. And a person who has both superstrength and skills is devastating (Wonder Woman is a perfect example).
Myth three. Knowing many styles makes you the best there is.
Any skilled martial artist\fighter basically invents his own fighting style often based on some of existing. There's no point in learning hundreds of styles from A to Z when it's much more useful to incorporate useful thing or two from each into your personal style.
Personal style or way of fighting takes advantage of fighter's strong points. In comics sometimes it's an advantage from particular thing (for example, the fighting style of Jack Hawksmoor (the Authority) is based on high kicks to take an advantage from those organic "metal" soles on his feet, or Spidey utilising his agility (though it makes his fighting look more like acrobatics show)). I don't even know why Wolverine needs THAT amouth of passive knowledge of martial arts when his standart model of fighting utilises the abuse of his claws\healing factor and relatively not effective since it's not so different from a drunk berserker wildly slashing with sword and the claws aren't so different from normal melee weapons in terms of parrying*...
*Take into account that all the three examples of personal styles mentioned above make any sence only with particular superhuman powers\abilities. Trying to replicate those persoinal styles would be either dangerous or impossible for normal human. That's just the examples of personal styles utilising superhuman powers.
Back to topic. Something like Punisher affecting Hulk is PIS incarnate. But again, the majority of Marvel (and not only Marvel)martial artists either
a)have gone through some "reinforcement surgery" which improved their reflexes and stuff (Captain America and the whole SSS thing).
b)have some chi manipulation related powers on almost superhuman level
c)have "supporting" superpowers (healing factor, energy powers)
But how many of that are really in street level category? And yes, pressure points stuff is overhyped in comics, and some of those feats (Batman kicking Hulk) are just ridiculous. Period. The "strong guy" just gets hit somewhere (Gamora hitting Thing simply in the chest) and then stuff happens.