Kyūsho

Kyūsho (literally: “places of suffering”) are anatomical weak points within the human body which are susceptible to the application of force or pressure, the result of which will cause pain, injury, unconsciousness, or death. The magnitude of the applied force, the area of the body to which the force is applied, and the technique used to apply the force always need be seriously contemplated.

In general, avoid striking any muscular or fatty areas. Muscle and fat act as a natural safety padding that will dampen the impact of your blows. While striking these areas will cause painful bruising, these bruises will not set in until long after the confrontation has ended. To quickly incapacitate an attacker, you must attack sensitive soft tissues, break small bones, or dislocate major joints. Fighting requires a functioning skeleton.

There are a number of popular books on the market today which detail the locations of vital points and list their effects. However, these books typically draw from traditional Chinese medical practices (such as acupuncture) and lack a scientific basis in anatomy or physiology. The only non-pseudoscience book about kyūsho for a popular audience is Deadly Karate Blows: The Medical Implications, by Brian C. Adams. If you cannot obtain a copy of this book, we suggest critically reading standard medical reference texts, such as Gray’s Anatomy, which can be purchased anywhere at a nominal cost. A list of kyūsho is provided in the table below, listed from the top of the body to the bottom, as that makes them easier to memorize:

Kyūsho

Skull	Temples	Eyes	Ears	Bridge of the nose
Philtrum	Chin	Side the of jaw	Side of the neck	Base of the cerebellum
Windpipe	Collarbone	Armpit	Elbow joint	Finger joints
Floating ribs	Inner wrist	Solar plexus	Upper back	Lower back
Abdomen	Kidneys	Bladder	Tailbone	Groin
Hollow of knee	Side of the knee	Shin	Achilles’ tendon	Instep

Every technique you perform should be always directed to one of these thirty kyūsho. Even when performing kata, you must envision striking the kyūsho of an imaginary attacker matching your height and build.

Skull

First off, do not punch someone in the skull. Heads are incredibly hard, and you can easily break your hand trying to crack one open. (This is why boxers wear padded gloves.) As such, attacks to the skull should only be conducted with the most robust parts of your body, such as the hammer-fist, elbow, knee, or heel. Even then, a skull fracture is unlikely, but it will introduce your opponent to the magical world of closed-head trauma.

Brain floats in the skull like a yolk in an egg. Localized force will crack the skull like an eggshell, less than that will move the head. This overwhelms the brain (E goes as v2), brain stays still while skull moves. Liquid helps cushion the blow of the skull striking the brain. Brain is scrunched, rupturing blood vessels on the side opposite the punch, and likely at the site of the punch from the rebound. This repeats until oscillations die out. Jolt and damage interrupts nerve conduction, so brain has to reboot, if you are lucky.

The brain has many redundant pathways, so being knocked out for < 30 s causes little damage. Being knocked out frequently will though. Loss of brain flow from blood loss, chokes, the brain builds up swelling, lactic acid, fatigue poisons and will idle until those are flushed out. When this happens, sometime these people wake up again, but they are very different afterwards. This is a coma.

Temples

The temples are made of bone just as thick as the rest of the skull; the reason why temple blows are more effective is because the temple is flat, so the blows can hit dead-on, rather than glancing off of a rounded surface.

Eyes

The bones behind the eye are thin. A really strong eye-poke can break this bone and pierce the brain.

Ears

rupture eardrum

In later volumes, we will introduce kumade uchi, the bear-paw strike, which was exclusively designed to do this.

tear ear off.

Tearing the opponent’s ear off may also impair the opponents vision, since the ear serves as an anchor point for most styles of eyeglasses.

Philtrum

The philtrum is the groove centered on the upper lip, directly under the nose. A strike to the philtrum can have a variety of results, depending on the severity of the impact. Listed from least to greatest, these are:

• Due to the nerve density in that region, all strikes to the nose will cause an involuntary watering of the eyes, which can temporarily impede the opponent's vision.
• Slit lips, along with chipped, fractured, or dislocated teeth are likely.
• Due to the skull's spherical nature, the sudden pressure pressure spike will cause a bursting fracture of the maxilla (upper jaw) under the eye, beside the nose, and above the canine teeth. This fracture typically occurs on the opposite side of the face, but same-side bursting fractures are possible. Eating becomes excruciatingly painful until the fracture heals.
• Unconscious, either from a concussion or from shock.
• Death, from one of the following processes:
  • Blood and/or tooth fragments entering the windpipe (trachea) can cause the vocal cords spasms which seal off the airflow to the lungs, causing death by suffocation from respiratory paralysis.
  • dural artery

Please not that contrary to popular portrayals in television, movies, and comics, a rising palmheel skrike to the philtrum will not cause instant death by fracturing the nosebone and using it to pierce the brain. This is a physiological impossibility, as noses are mostly cartilage. The only passages within the skull which lead to the brain are those for the nerves and blood vessels, which go straight-up, and are too small to accommodate the nose structure. While it is possible for any forceful blow to the head to cause instant death, this typically a consequence of concussions or ruptured blood vessels.

Chin

The bitton

Ikken hissatsu: “one-blow one-kill” the rare -- but real -- ability to deliver fight-ending power to break bones, disrupt organs or kill with every single strike.

Base of the cerebellum

Most of these are straightforward, and require no explanation. [define solar plexus, floating ribs]

any forceful blow to any vulnerable part of the body is capable of crippling or killing. A boxing punch is no better or worse at doing so than a karate or kung fu punch.

A well-placed punch to the upper lip can keep going, tear off the dural arteries, and push his brain through the hole in the skull. Dies instantly, only noise he makes is when he hits the floor.

Nerves are the most energy- greedy cells in the body.

Without oxygen, glucose metabolizes wrong and becomes lactic acid. Brain shuts down to preserve itself from lactic acid build up. Anything less than 5 minutes is ok. More than that causes brain damage. A delicate person, one with clogged arteries or diabetics could see it in 3 minutes. There are also cases of kids trapped under ice for 15 minutes and coming out normal though.

Strikes to the side of the knee work too well; don’t practice

A well-placed forceful blow to the floating ribs can rupture the kidney with the broken bone shards.

Striking between the should blades can send shockwaves into the heart , aortic arch, or vargas nerve.

Solar plexus just refres to a general area, and nota specific body part. Striking it it can stop the diaphram, stopping breathing. A forceful blow can send shockwave into the liver, heart, and lungs.

Outside elbow breaks damage ligaments and cartilage; it cannot be repaired without surgery.

Windpipe

Any across-the-throat chokes, strikes, or any other form of pressure can easily crush the thyroid cartilage (Adam’s apple) or trachea (windpipe).

Crushing the throat requires emergency tracheotomy or the opponent will die.

Lower back

(e.g., the small of the back; sacrum)

Bladder

popo like a water baloon, flooding the opponent’s abdominal cavity with blood and pee.

uremia

Groin

Striking the groin muscle However, when we talk about attacks to the groin, it’s usually just a polite (read: parent and school administrator friendly) way of saying to attack a man’s testicles. So, let’s just drop the facade and talk about testicles directly, like adults. In Goshin-Jutsu, attacking the testicles is not just permitted; it is encouraged. Groin strikes, being as painful, debilitating, and humiliating as they are, should be a part of any waza -- but they shouldn’t necessarily be the first attack. There’s no element of surprise associated with a groin attack; literally everyone, everywhere, knows that trick. A groin kick won’t necessarily drop an opponent either. Although being kicked in the testicles is immensely painful, the pain is not always immediate. The opponent might have to take a few steps, or wait up to ten minutes before the full effect is felt. Groin strikes are not a solves-all since every man must develop a 6th sense to protect their groins in order to survive middle school. This reflex can be exploited to your advantage. Attacks to the groin are usually to get your opponent to flinch. As your opponent frantically covers his groin, he stops thinking about protecting his head, and leaves himself open to counterattack. This is not a feint. These attacks must be thrown with full-force, with the intent to do harm. Feints wind up being slower that real techniques, and the opponent must be legitimately afraid of groin injury to drop his guard and flinch. Besides, why fake-hit your attacker, when you can actually hit him?

Instep

The instep is a kyūsho because it contains numerous small bones. This is why when we kick, we strike out opponents with the ball of the foot, and not with our the insteps, as many Korean martial arts do. Stomping on an opponent’s instep is a common starting move in waza involving an attacker who grabs you from behind. Crushing the instep literally leaves the opponent without a leg to stand on, since the foot is essentially a tripod comprised of the heel and the first and fifth metatarsals. Stomps to an opponent’s foot should always be directed their instep, and not their toes because:

• unsupported bones
• Your attacker may be wearing steel-toed work boots, which renders them immune to toe stomps. However, instep stomps will work regardless of what the opponent wears.