How To Punch Harder & Faster: Do UFC Or Bare Knuckle Boxers Punch Harder w/ Wes Elliott (SSOF Ep 79)

Wes Elliott1:39

But we can get into that. I know that I've listened to a couple of other podcasts that you've had and there's a lot of talk about the inconsistencies that come with the different types of bags and gloves and padding and stuff like that, so it's quite interesting.

James de Lacey3:11

Yeah, maybe we'll quickly dive into that before we get into some of the data. But obviously one of the popular things, Power Cube is probably the most mainstream one that maybe most people would recognize listening to this. And if you don't recognize them, you probably recognize what it looks like. I mean, you see all sorts, I mean Kate Combat was doing a lot with it, Stephen Wonderboy Thompson holding the big pad and having people kick it. People talk about Francis Ngannou hitting the Power Cube and having the heaviest punch basically.

So dive into, is the Power Cube actually accurately testing punching force?

Wes Elliott3:35

Well, it's measuring joules, right? And so that's a power measurement. And I don't really know, I don't, for me, pounds of force is just the basic power number for me, for force, right? Now they measure in Newtons and then pounds of force is just kind of like a different type of reading. But if you're on a bathroom scale, right, you're exerting pounds of force on that bathroom scale.

And so I think it becomes a little bit easier for the user as well whenever there's numbers that they can easily recognize. It's like getting in your car doing a certain speed limit at miles per hour. If it's kilometers per hour, then around here they wouldn't know how fast I'm going, right?

The Power Cube, I haven't tested it. I've seen a lot of data on it. I'm actually glad that there's other products that are making some moves because for the longest time when we started this product in 2011, the sensor was like the size of a pager, right? I mean it was way too, it was big enough for us to use and collect data on. I don't know that it was a consumer product back then and it wasn't until 2015, I believe, when we got it small enough to be able to make it to where it's not as uncomfortable in the wrist.

But yeah, I mean back then it was just we were the only ones kind of doing it and it was hard to find people that were part of this industry and to make this industry grow. Because I think that it's going to require other products to kind of help grow this industry as well and the interest in the industry.

James de Lacey5:36

Yeah, and I think, I mean yeah, devices like Power Cube are definitely growing the interest there. How does how it's mounted affect the outputs? Obviously you have some, I think some videos of Wonderboy holding it against his leg taking readings, others where it's mounted on a solid beam. How does that change readings typically?

Wes Elliott6:00

So when you have like a force plate inside of the bag, depending on the angle of the actual force plate, if you're hitting it straight on or if it's angled, like if it's on his leg and it's angled just a bit, that force plate is driven off of a cylinder. And so basically you're just compressing this cylinder in order to get your reading of your measurement of pounds of force or joules in this case.

So it just depends on the foam, the density of the foam, and also is that foam getting softer along the way, right? I don't know the layers of that particular cube, but I think it's a starting point. I don't know how accurate it is, but being on a stationary target probably helps it out a lot.

James de Lacey7:03

Nice. And then obviously you've gone the extra mile, you've got the Striketec boxing sensors, ones that are essentially strapped to your wrist or your glove, and you're able to measure a lot of different variables that I mean devices like Power Cube cannot, and a lot of different variables, I guess, more than what other boxing sensors can measure as well, which I really like.

So maybe dive into, I mean you can share your screen now with some of the data or we can just talk through some of it initially, but you've collected so much data from elite fighters, strikers, and you've broken down essentially the phases of a punch to the point where you can almost decipher what is a good punch, what is a bad punch, just by looking at some lines, which is pretty crazy. And maybe just go into some details of, okay, what actually makes a good punch or even a hard punch or a fast punch?

Wes Elliott7:31

Yeah, so let's dive into that first before we get into the data and kind of break down those different phases, right? I mean, the most important phase is the approach, right? And then I believe we were speaking before in the past that someone that has a better reaction time will start out with a higher initial acceleration, which will allow them to gradually accelerate faster to impact, right?

You guys have talked about the double peak and there's a lot of different variables when it comes to measuring that as well. You don't know if it's a psychological issue, right? I know that we've seen a lot of this deceleration right before impact and we're able to chat with the athlete and ask them about any injuries to their hands.

And it's either a psychological thing where they've hurt their hands in the past, and so sometimes whenever the bag is really really heavy, because we've been in gyms where they use the 300 pound bags, they're massive and they're crazy, right? Or the wrists are bothering them, something from grappling or something like that.

But yeah, the acceleration phase, the approach phase to the punch or to the impact, is probably the most important part of the punch. And it's really kind of where you're starting that acceleration, right? Someone that starts lower obviously they're going to have a harder time to accelerate to a point to where it makes a difference, right, as far as when the impact goes. So yeah, I mean I know working reaction time is probably one of the key components to any fighter that wants to box or train at least.

Yeah, I mean there's a lot of variables when it comes to, so I don't want to, I'm trying to make it like easy.

To understand without getting too muddy in the waters there. But yeah, it makes sense what you're saying there around the initial acceleration. I think most people listening will be able to understand that idea of being able to accelerate faster initially you got less room to make up against time to impact.

James de Lacey10:00

But should we break down some of the other phases as well after that?

Wes Elliott10:00

Yeah, so and another thing is technique. If you start seeing in some of our approach, in those acceleration curves, it'll be a little bit wavy. And so we essentially try to break down the approach into three phases and we try to make sure that from zero G's to like a third of the way in that the acceleration, the rate of climb of the acceleration, is still in the positive motion.

Because there are a lot of times when it starts, when you have that heel there's a couple of heels, it's not just a double peak, but it also depends on the technique of that person. Are they twisting their wrist as they're punching, or are they just more rigid?

And then the hook is a whole other story. I mean trying to get a smooth acceleration through a hook is, I think a lot of it's technique, but also psychological. You got to make effort into not slowing down into rotating. I mean, it's a timing thing for sure.

And then once you make impact, you have peak impact, and then you have peak deceleration, a change of rate in acceleration. And then you have the area under the curve which is the impulse of the punch and we do a calculation for both of those. And just over the years of having this database we've kind of estimated an effective mass of that person. Now there's other variables in it like technique, if their rotation is correct along the way.

And those criteria are basically set by athletes that have really good technique and we kind of... And I don't know that it's always technique that makes the biggest difference because there are some athletes that don't look that pretty when they're punching but they still hit hard. They're still fast, they still hit hard, they've kind of adapted to what their technique is.

So I mean once they hit the bag, depending on the type of bag that they're hitting, if you hit a pillow that area underneath the curve is going to be longer but your peak is not going to be nearly as high. But if you hit a wall, you're going to have a short area underneath the curve and then a high peak. So there's a lot of different variables that come into play during the impact point.

But basically in order to get a high force punch you have to hit the bag fast, or the opponent, whatever it is, and you have to follow through. And so depending on... I've had some data that I included the extension of the person's punch and that's huge. Because I know that we were, when we were doing this for Direct TV, Direct TV had a boxing venue a long time ago called, it started out as big bare knuckle boxing, BKB, and then they went into big knockout boxing.

And I know that we had stats that came up on the screen, I think back then we went by like hit chip or something. But we had stats that came up on the screen and I remember this one punch distinctly because there were people that were questioning the punch. And it was when a fighter was come moving into another fighter and so he jammed his punch, he wasn't able to accelerate for his full extension of his punch, and so he met him about halfway.

And the force was still high but the speed was low, and that's counterintuitive of what you would think would make a high force punch.

But you're not taking into consideration that that other, this object is moving towards you. So it might have jammed up your punch but it moved towards you and helped you with that impact. So yeah, I mean that's been interesting to look at. We have so much data that, listen to everybody's podcast, talk about the research papers. I want to get more involved in that because I think that it would be some interesting findings from the data for sure.

James de Lacey14:50

Yeah, 100%. And if anyone's maybe listening to some of these terms like effective mass, double peak, deceleration, et cetera, if after this you go listen to Seth lki on the Sweet Science of Fighting podcast, he is I guess you could say one of the pioneers in that space. And we actually dive through all of that in that podcast too and he's a bit of a big name in the space regarding that.

But when you talk about when you talk about follow through and a punch just for visualization purposes, is that like when when someone tells you to punch through the bag or through the pads versus just heading it, that would be considered follow through?

Wes Elliott15:15

Yeah absolutely, yeah. Because there's also like in Taekwondo and karate they teach that snap point, that point fighting. And I've always, I was always told that it's that snap that generates power, but it doesn't. I mean you have to follow through on the bag, you have to follow through on anything if you're going to affect that object.

And essentially when we're measuring force that's the whole point of it. We want to measure damage to the object, or the person. It's not just about how much you can generate as a boxer, it's about how much damage you can put into that bag or that person. So whenever we're taking a look at all these different aspects along the way of a punch, that's the most important thing for us, is we want to measure damage done.

James de Lacey16:11

Nice. I was actually looking at some of the data you sent over, the UFC comparisons you did, and I was looking at average force on the side. I don't know if how if it's significantly different or not, but average force. I don't know can I say their names? I guess we're going to have it on the screen right?

So so Mickey G had the highest average punch force out of this cohort. But he had, I was trying to look at some of the impact duration as well. So that impact duration would be essentially the follow through, correct? And he had he had one of the higher I guess follow-through durations too. So he was able to, obviously he obviously have more time to impart that force on the opponent. Would that be correct assumption?

Wes Elliott17:11

Yeah, well it's interesting whenever we did that study at the UFC Summit. We've worked for them a couple of times in the UFC Pi. It's really important, I think Seth mentioned this as well, but it's really important that the boxers that are training, that they put effort into it. Because I remember that day there was a day that we went in there it seemed like some of them put more effort than the other ones.

Thiago Santos, you could tell when he started cracking on the bag it seems like the whole boxing rack was just shaking. I mean he was putting some serious power into it. And so Mickey Gall, he just at that time he was being very technical and he was striking hard on the bag, he was trying to put effort into it. And I think that's if we had like a routine for them, weekly or daily or whatever that we could put them through, I think we would see a huge difference in the data. And I know that Mickey G's a decent striker but he's a jiu-jitsu guy.

And Jimmy Rivera has some huge numbers as well. But he's a little, he's a stout little guy. I mean he's just really dense and he's just, he's got a lot of rotation that he puts into his punch.

James de Lacey18:36

Yeah, actually there's before I jump more into that data, we actually have a question on on the live YouTube here. Someone was asking, CTE stair, that's a funny name, would punching the heavy bag hard as it's swinging back, like you mentioned with someone walking in, be better for training effective mass than punching a stationary heavy bag? So when they say swinging back are they hitting it when it's swinging back? Because you're not going to hit a lot of effective mass through the bag if it's moving away from you.

Wes Elliott18:36

Sorry, swinging back towards them I think?

Swinging back towards you will help you generate more power. It just depends on, when it comes to that, it depends on the ounce of the gloves that you're training with and the strength of your wrist. I mean or elbow, like the entire chain. And you want to make sure that whenever they're making impact that they're not, they don't have to be fully...

Extended, but you want to be close to full extension, right? Probably 80% of that, so that the other 20% you're driving through the bag. But yes, having a bag that's pulling back into you is a good way to start strengthening that chain.

James de Lacey19:35

Nice. And to answer your second question there about what routine would be good for increasing punching power, you can go to the Sweet Science of Fighting Underground. That is all the training programs in there – the Striking Dominate The Ring, plus the whole year's striking programming is in there.

Andrew Usher also tuned in, a favorite guest on here. They've definitely seen technique a big factor in the lab for punching speed and power. But I also wanted to ask around that. Obviously with the high thing, he is some of the lowest average arm extension in that, but he's a long limbed individual. So what happens there basically?

Wes Elliott20:00

Well, it depends on the type of punch that they're throwing, right? If they're throwing hooks and they're standing close to the bag, yeah, if the bag's moving into them.

I think there was a few bags, a few different bags there that day, and they're all relatively the same. But some of them get punched on a lot more than the others, right? And it also depends on the height of the person, where they're striking in the bag. Because if they're hanging low and it's a tall person – I remember Thiago, I go back to him because the bag moved a lot when he struck it, and it appeared as if he was putting a lot of force into it, which he does.

But it was also higher up on the bag where it was easier to move it and make it create this huge display of strength. But if it would have been lower on the bag or midway through it, it would have been a little different, I'm sure. It wouldn't have moved around as much.

But yeah, I think there's a lot of work to be done on studying what actually the differences are between – why is this person have a higher force with a lower extension? What's their speed look like? What's their acceleration? What's their rate of climb in their acceleration, right? So that's one thing that we're doing more a deeper dive into as well. Now that AI has come a long ways, we're working with that and it's helping out tremendously going through – there's just so much data to go through.

James de Lacey21:51

Dude, the stuff you sent me is another level. There's so much in there.

Wes Elliott21:51

Well, that data is – so essentially whenever the sensors are running, it's measuring a lot of data, right? But it's all raw data. It's just all acceleration numbers, gyros. We have two accelerometers on there: we have a high G and we have a low G, and then we have one gyro. And the amount of data that comes through those things is a lot.

And so what we would do at first is we would store all of that data, but it would take up a lot of space on the phone. And so we would have it transmit to the server, to the cloud server, in between rounds. That helped us ship out a bunch of devices to professional athletes. And as they're training with their coach, we could have all of this data.

And then that way if we realize that some of our algorithms might be off a bit, we can go back and adjust it and rerun all of that data. So this converted data in the drive that I showed you is – I mean, for me when I look at it, it's just simple, because there's so much that you can extrapolate from the raw data.

James de Lacey22:46

I know you sent me some Bare Knuckle boxing summary as well. Do you see a difference in punching forces, speed, anything like that between Bare Knuckle versus with gloves?

Wes Elliott23:13

So I think it was Joe Rogan that said that people don't quite hit as hard when it comes to – he just said that, actually, on the latest podcast again, did he? Really? Eddie Bravo.

I understand what he's trying to say when he says it. Because essentially, if you have a bare hand, psychologically you're not going to want to punch as hard. What you have to take into account, or a couple of things: one is they're wrapping their wrist, right? So they're wrapping their wrist and the top of their hand, so they're not worried as much about breaking it. But what about the adrenaline that's going through them? If they have an open opportunity to punch someone, they're not pulling punches. Plus, animals. Absolutely animals in that organization, right?

And so we ran a test where we built this big cylinder – we made it like a punching arm, right? And we put a glove on the end of it, and then we put a load cell or force plate at the other end. And we would put different gloves on it. And the MMA gloves, it was like 150 PSI in the actual cylinder. It was striking around 800 pounds of force on this load plate, whereas the boxing glove was around like upper 500s. So there was a huge difference just on that small amount of PSI in the cylinder that we had.

But what we're able to do is get it consistent, right? Because that cylinder – whenever a boxer is training, it might seem like the data is inconsistent, but their speed isn't always going to be the same, right? There's so much fluctuation in their actual speed of their punches. And so when we started dialing everything in, it was about getting this consistency through this punching piston, right?

And then we set up different – a lot of different fixtures in labs that we were set up – so that it was always the same thing every single time. It wasn't – we didn't have so many variables with a person punching.

And then we would just run the process on the actual people. We'd have tons of different types of people come in, not just always professionals, because sometimes that skews your results as well.

James de Lacey25:41

I hope you're enjoying the chat so far. Before we get back to it, I just want to let you know that Sweet Science of Fighting is more than just a podcast. We have a full training app with strength conditioning programs for strikers, grapplers, and MMA athletes, so you don't have to think about what you're doing. And you're getting access to the latest scientific methods to improve combat sports performance.

We have programs specifically for judo, for jiu-jitsu, for wrestling, MMA, boxing. Muay Thai is coming soon. All these things are going to be in the training app. We also have a private community where some of the coaches that have been on the podcast are in there to help you with any training questions and any performance questions you have. For example, Andrew Usher and Casper Durhuus.

We also have some online courses within the training app. They cover strength conditioning, mental skills, and weight cutting. And finally, we now have Ryan Voss in the community – a second degree jiu-jitsu black belt – who is there to break down any of your grappling matches that you want seen to by a second eye. He's currently breaking down videos on a separate Sweet Science of Fighting YouTube channel, and he will break down your video within the community. So if you have a match or a roll that you just recorded, you can upload that in there and Ryan will break that down for you.

So what are you waiting for? Jump down the description. You can check out the Sweet Science of Fighting Underground. Otherwise, enjoy the podcast.

Wes Elliott27:02

Nice. So obviously, with those tests, we see the MMA gloves with less padding, harder punches. And so we would assume that the Bare Knuckle would also be harder. Yeah.

It – especially now, I feel like when they first started Bare Knuckle boxing, I don't know that there was that much of a wrap around their wrist. And now when I look at it, they're wrapping everything but their knuckles, right? And you're just like, that's just signing up for more power, right? I mean, they're just unleashing those punches now because they're, like I said, they're not worried as much about injury with everything wrapped up and tight.

So I would love to be able to – I know that having sensors on the wrist during boxing matches, we've been fortunate enough to be able to do it with some leagues that were – that accepted it and they wanted to learn from it. But it's a psychological thing with fighters too, right? I don't know that I've met a fighter yet that – outside of being around other data scientists or with their coach – that wants to have their data captured, right? Because they're kind of scared of it, and I get that.

But if an opponent sees your data, that doesn't mean that they're going to beat you and they're going to be able to train for something, right? I mean, it's just – I don't know. I feel like the pros outweigh the cons by a mile when it comes to training with technology, for sure. And I think one of the biggest things is – we're always talking about speed and power. What about bad habits? Right? What if whenever I –

I throw a cross, I give a tell with my left hand and my left hand is popping, or if I throw a hook. Or what if I throw a combination more often times than I think I do? Someone that's watching tape on you is going to see that and they're going to be able to pick it apart and counter from it.

But if your coach was picking that up along the way, they could eliminate some of these habits that you take going, because that's just something that we all do, especially when we're training. Doing shadow boxing drills or things like that, you kind of get in a flow of doing the same type of punches.

So I think when it comes to mapping out the training routine, that's something that's very interesting as well.

James de Lacey29:27

Nice. I have a question for you from Carlos Sanchez here on the live. It might be a good plug for Striketec actually, but he's asking how to track if you are making progress and your punching power if you work out at home.

Wes Elliott29:53

I think you're out just a little bit.

James de Lacey29:53

How do you track your punching—

Wes Elliott29:53

How do you track your punching power if you work out at home? Well, we have our Striketec sensors. I think that's, if you want to go a super cheap route, you can get a load cell or a force plate and strap it onto a bag, but you're hitting metal. I don't know, I mean it's not that easy to do when it comes to force plate. But sensors I think are the best way to do that.

We have a mobile app that the user can go through. We have at granular level—I've seen some of these apps where it's just they give you an overall reading, but we track every single punch that comes through. And so they can, we have three different levels of granularity on the training stats. So we have a basic overview that kind of goes through their overall rating and then breaks down speed, power, endurance. And then we have, our sensors communicate with a heart rate monitor. We work with Polar right now, and so you can measure your heart rate while you're training as well.

And then you can break it down into punch by punch throughout your training session, and then you go down a step further and you go to the training session and you can break down every single round and it lists all your punches that you threw, every single punch that you threw. So it can get quite detailed for sure.

James de Lacey31:11

Yeah. If you haven't checked out Wes, I'm going to put it in the chat here for everyone listening. But I brought Wes on, I mean, my data science is pretty horrible to be honest, but I've had Andrew Asher who's in the chat there, I've had Seth Litsky also check the stuff out. Wes is a wizard with the stuff too, and the stuff they're doing is completely different to what these other brands are doing. So if you're in the market for boxing sensors, yeah, Wes has got it nailed there. So check that out.

But regarding the tracking your own progress as well, can you see technique or see bad technique, quote unquote, or good technique through maybe some of this data with sensors?

Wes Elliott32:05

You can. And so one thing that we didn't introduce yet into the app was rotational data. The rotation of the fist during impact, we do capture that, but you can get into so much detail that it becomes a bit difficult to understand along the way. So technique is a tricky one. We can collect the data and we can convert the data. It's just putting it in a manner where someone understands it is the difficult part. I think that's probably the most challenging part of any software, is the user experience and the user interface of it.

But yeah, we can for sure measure technique. And I guess technique is always dependent on, we've kind of experimented with trying to find technique either by someone that you choose. So if we have a certain style of boxer or kickboxer or Muay Thai fighter, they all have a little bit of different technique than the way that they punch. So if someone wants to train like that, we're experimenting with introducing a couple of those to where it compares the user data against a style. So that it kind of helps dial you into, hey, well you need to rotate 10 degrees, right?

And then it has like a little animation. We have that on our desktop app. We're going to try to integrate that into the mobile app. It just becomes, I think now the mobile phones that are out are almost as fast as laptops and computers. I think in the past the processing power of it kind of prevented us from introducing so many different features in the app, but it's getting to a point to where we can kind of speed that up, especially with AI and predictive analytics and machine learning.

James de Lacey34:14

Nice. And I know you sent me as well some almost like round by round data here, and I'm wondering if this is something that if someone was using sensors or whatever, if this, I guess, data would have any value. So you've got force and speed, average force and speed in round one, round two, round three. Maybe you could see a trend across this. Is this something that someone could use potentially as a way to track progress at all?

I know obviously there's a lot of variables in that. Sparring is obviously a multifactorial arena. But is there a way, hey, my average force is, four weeks later is much higher over the rounds compared to what it previously was, or my average speed was high? Is that something that could be used for as a progress tracker?

Wes Elliott34:38

Yeah, I think so. I mean, it depends on the goals for that user. We have people punch on the bag in low volume and then high volume. It's whenever you get into the high volume, after 150 punches is when you start deteriorating, and that's what brings down your average. So you just have to analyze the data correctly based on what your goals are.

If you're looking at your overall average and it's 2,000 punches in the database that you're looking at, it's going to be harder to bring that number up. You kind of got to go down a little bit lower level on it to analyze it.

James de Lacey35:38

Interesting. So you could even look at that almost like the threshold of punches it takes for your speed and average force to start to drop.

Wes Elliott35:38

Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, that's kind of how we measure fatigue and endurance. The goal for us was to figure out at what round do someone kind of start losing momentum. I have a good comparison of Stevens and Rosado, I can't remember, Curtis Stevens and Gabriel Rosado. They fought for BKB. It was crazy, but because every single match that we recorded for them, we could determine who the winner was based on just looking at the analytics quickly. But we didn't, they didn't reveal all of that stuff to the judges because that's a whole other conversation.

But in that last fight, Gabriel was the champion and Stevens was challenging for it. But Stevens had, he impacted, he had more damage on Rosado, higher speed. Still, Rosado's speed had gone down quite a bit in the later rounds and he didn't throw near as many punches. And so, I mean, for us it was the clear winner of Stevens, but he didn't end up winning it according to the judges. And so I remember behind the scenes everybody was kind of like, this is why you need technology.

It's like there's very little requirements to be a judge, or a commissioner for that matter. And it's hard to see everything. It's like the coaches that say that they can tell when their athletes hitting harder or punching faster. I mean, I get it, that they feel like they can, but what if that coach held mitts for 10 other fighters and maybe they had less energy the next day?

There's so many different variables when it comes to feeling something. And you can't see, when it comes to punching that fast, you can't see the difference in a few miles an hour, but that makes a big difference on impact. So it's just not easy to, it's not a good thing to gauge visual. It's not an easy thing to gauge visual.

James de Lacey38:15

Kind of have my brain connecting to different things now, but obviously with Andrew Asher's new research showing punch count isn't an indicator of work capacity. So if anyone's familiar, I broke down his research paper on the channel last week, I think it was. Muscles weren't recovering between rounds, but punch counts stayed the same. I'm thinking now with, obviously that's a harder thing to track for most people, muscle recovery, having to wear—

Obviously with Andrew Asha's new research showing punch count isn't an indicator of work capacity—if anyone's familiar, I broke down his research paper on the channel last week I think it was—muscles weren't recovering between rounds but punch counts stayed the same. I'm thinking now with, obviously that's a harder thing to track for most people, muscle recovery, having to wear Moxy sensors and things, but if you have a punch sensor, maybe like Striketec, and you're doing that, maybe you can look at—you're looking at punch count already—but you can actually see speeds drop off, maybe round to round or towards the end of the round, indicating for fatigue there as well.

So that might be almost like a field test of doing it versus having to do it the other way. I know I'm just kind of thinking out, that could be an interesting little application.

Wes Elliott39:06

Well, when it comes to punch count, it goes back to like a habit or just like how a person trains. Because if they're used to just throwing a certain amount of volume within two or three minutes, they're going to try to continue to do that for as long as they can, as long as they have energy. Because unless they're really, really tired, they're not going to sit for 10 seconds without throwing something. I mean, it just depends on what kind of fight's going on, if it's a boxing match.

But the speed and the power is a whole different story, because they might not be punching nearly as fast or hitting nearly as hard. But I think it's just a training—it's just inside of them—of how often to throw a punch whenever they're in the ring. And that's something that you probably just pick up through training.

James de Lacey40:02

I can see where punch count isn't as big of a detector, I guess, as it would be like speed and the power of the punch, for sure. You mentioned, I was going to say, with the judging thing you were talking about there, how the winner maintained or had higher force and velocity, etc., is doing more damage. Is that something you see as potentially an objective way for judges to judge fights?

Because obviously damage—I mean, at least within the UFC, damage is the number one factor that they've made for judging. So I mean, if you're looking at damage, you're probably looking at how hard are the strikes, and that's probably the only indicator you could do.

Wes Elliott40:31

I mean, I think that's what classifies damage, is how someone was hit. I think that we're trying to introduce technology into a sport that's been around for a long time, that is just about people fighting—just guys fighting, girls fighting—and that's kind of the old school people and the old school way of thinking. We still have a lot of those guys around, and especially when it comes to judging, and they're just a little bit timid on introducing something that they might not understand.

But, it's just like our parents and grandparents—they used to say that they're not going to text anybody until everybody texts. And it's like, you don't have a choice. You got to kind of keep up with technology.

I don't see why a big organization—I know that we've communicated with the UFC quite a bit. That company now is just so big, it's hard to be in the room with the right people at the right time that are all on the same page, especially when you have that many people running a huge thing like that.

James de Lacey42:01

So I think it needs to be implemented into the sport. I know that, I think everywhere except for here, they do open scoring for boxing, so that they reveal the judges' score after each round. I know that there was a couple of apps that they were trying to reduce open scoring, boxing here in the States, and they were just kind of like they didn't want to change. I know that they pushed it for years, but the judges and stuff, they just didn't want to change.

Wes Elliott42:33

But I will say that in 2016, I believe it was, the Nevada Athletic Commission approved us to use our sensors in a live fight. And it wasn't easy. I mean, I remember going there and there was like 10 news crews there. And every other commission, I feel like it's easy to just kind of communicate with the commissioner—you can just pop in their office and go through a few things, have a doctor explain some things about the sensors.

But at Nevada, they're all attorneys. I mean, it's eight attorneys up there, and it's like going into a court hearing where they're all sitting up in front of you. And I was told that I was just going to meet up with them in their office, and then they set me—they call me up and I'm having this hearing. I'm trying to convince these guys into why they should allow me to put the sensors in the, or use them during the fight.

And fortunately, they were open to it, and everything worked out great. So I was happy that they were at least willing to try, because at first they just told me no. And then one guy, one guy put his foot down and said, if he's willing to go out on a limb, he's going to be the one looking bad if it's a joke out there. He goes, let him try. And so then they all kind of jumped.

But it just goes to show you, like, if you can get a couple of people in there that are pro-technology and kind of evolving the sport, then I think it's good news for everybody.

James de Lacey44:13

And I know Andre has chimed in again on the chat. He's very excited about what we're talking about before, regarding looking at punches thrown with your Striketec technology along with muscle oxygenation. At that point where you start to see that fatigue, comparing punch kinetics and oxygen kinetics simultaneously, so effective punchers, quantifying what they are, etc. I mean, obviously the PhD hasn't beaten Andrew down yet—he's still excited about collecting more data, so that's a good sign.

But is this, or is a lot of this, I guess, transferable to kicking as well? I mean, you can't just place the strike sensors on your legs, I'm assuming, because obviously the app's algorithm is based on a punch. But would that be something you're looking at in the future, or is that something you can do now?

Wes Elliott44:42

We do it now. It's not specific for a punch until it comes to the technique, but that's something that you can just learn. You can just write some algorithms for the app to understand what rotation, what acceleration, should be in place for a certain technique.

And we have a skill level in our app too, which kind of allows us to assess the fighter. Because I know when we talked about effective mass—if you have an exact clone of yourself, one of you guys has been training for 10 years, one has never thrown a punch in his life, but you guys have exactly the same measurements—who's going to punch harder? Clearly the person who's been training for 10 years.

So, but there are characteristics about that person's punch that are different, a lot different, than this punch from the guy who's never punched anything. And those are the things that we take into consideration whenever we're assigning someone essentially an effective mass. It's, hey, we need to look at what their acceleration looked like to impact. And you can't do it just off of one punch.

The more punches you put into the system, it becomes a better detection of the skill level of that particular user. And that was kind of hard to develop on the way, but I think that's kind of the only way to really get consistency in measuring the force of a punch.

James de Lacey46:11

Nice. The same, I guess, principles apply—for example, you mentioned the initial acceleration of the punch being the most important part of it. Does that same apply for the kick as well then?

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Wes Elliott47:33

I think it's, as long as you can—it's the fast twitch muscle fibers. I mean, that really engaging into the movement as quickly as you can will always...

I think it's as long as you can, it's the fast twitch muscle fibers, right? I mean, that really engaging into the movement as quickly as you can will always yield higher results than moving slowly into it, right? Because there's just so much you have to make up for when you start off slow. So I mean, it's essentially the same principles. You're just accelerating your leg a lot further along than you are your punches.

Which, you know, I do remember the show Fight Science kind of. It's been a while. It was, there was a TV show on I think National Geographic long time ago. It was called Fight Science and they analyzed, like, Bas Rutten punching a dummy and rupturing its liver or something. It was just kind of, it was crazy, kind of the stuff that they did.

But they had martial artists on there from different places around the world really, and they were measuring kicks. But they put a sensor on a bag that had a spring on it and it would go back and forth. And so we worked with Cindy Burr, who was on the engineering team there, who kind of put everything together. But they made a lot of mistakes. They kind of just whipped that thing together quickly for entertainment value.

But they were trying to, they came out and said that there was people that were kicking 150 miles an hour. And I'm like, Jesus, there's no way, right? Like, you just can't even, you can't come close to that, right?

And I think whenever we started showing how fast people punch, even for the broadcast, right? Because they're trying to, they're trying to sell entertainment and then tell a story as well, right? And so whenever we would tell them, "Hey, well, you know, 30 miles an hour is a fast, fast punch," right? And they're like, "Well, why? I mean, if someone throws a baseball, it's 90 miles an hour." And I said, "Well, that baseball's accelerating a lot longer than the punch is, right?"

But if you think, so we started measuring the hand speed of baseball players, pitchers, right? And so you have more than double the extension. But even at a, like, we measured a guy that threw 98 miles an hour, his hand speed was 31 miles an hour, the baseball pitcher. Right? Now you take a boxer, and he's not stretching and reaching back, right? This boxer is accelerating from zero to 30 miles an hour just in front of him. That's a lot faster than the pitcher's arm, right?

So it's all, it's all about just, I think telling that story is what we were trying to accomplish along the way when we had these on the big screen. It's just going to take more time in the seat, right?

James de Lacey50:32

How do you see AI getting more into this combat sports analyst? I know I emailed you one a little while ago, I don't know if you saw it, that basically breaking down like a whole fight with AI and be able to punch count, all sorts of things on there. What's your take on that in the future of the things being used?

Wes Elliott50:55

We're working, we have some of that technology as well, just motion tracking, object tracking. And I think it pairs well with our sensors. So my, because we have a cool little feature in our app that allows you to record yourself while you're working out, and then you have like a video overlay of the speed of the punch and the power of the punch, right? So you can kind of can save that video or you can take screen grabs from the video, and it just kind of gives a cool little shareable picture with the overlay on it, right?

But I mean, yeah, we just have a, there's a lot, there's a lot going on in the market with AI. I think that I think it's going to help. I hope there's no resistance from the judges, right, and the commissioners. I think if they would just embrace it that, they could be a part of it as well. Because we're not here to make them look like they don't do a job well. We still want them to be in charge, right? AI is not just here to take over everybody's job. It's here to assist. I mean, that's the way that I look at it.

But yeah, the motion tracking has really been advanced, especially with a couple of these companies like Open AI. They're just moving along quickly, but they're investing hundreds of millions of dollars into those things, right? So I think it's a good thing.

James de Lacey52:16

Nice. No, I think that's everything I've got for you today. Where can people find you and keep up with what you're doing?

Wes Elliott52:16

So we're, I'm at StrikeTec on all the social media, Facebook, Instagram. For a while there we kind of laid low on that because we were working on the back end with, we worked with Bare Knuckle Fight Night and a couple of other organizations. And so now we're starting to kind of get back into the content sharing. But StrikeTec.com, and I'm at StrikeTec across all the different social media channels.

James de Lacey52:45

We'll link those up in the description, so whether you're listening on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, whatever it is, it'll be down there for you to check out. But thanks for coming on, Wes. I appreciate it.

Wes Elliott53:11

Not a problem. Thanks for having me.