There\'s a conventional wisdom that the best way to minimize the force impact of

Question

There's a conventional wisdom that the best way to minimize the force impact of a punch to the head is to lean into it, rather than away from it.

Is it true? If so, why?

EDIT: Hard to search for where I got this CW, but heres one, and another. The reason it seems counter-intuitive is that I'd think if you move in the direction that a force is going to collide into you with, the collision would theoretically be softer. You see that when you catch a baseball barehanded; it hurts much more when you move towards the ball, rather than away from the ball, as it hits your hand.

Explanation / Answer

Without having heard this argument before I would guess that the plan it to reduce the degree to which the head rattles around.

Most of the brain damage (short term and long term) associate with a punch comes from the brain bouncing off the skull a few times as the head whips back and forth. Minimize the motion, minimize the damage. By leaning in you get a whole complex of muscles pre-tensioned to absorb the impact smoothly and give yourself some room to rock back without losing your balance. Your facial bones will heal.

That said, trying to analyze anything related to fighting in terms of physics is hard because bio-mechanics is always a complicated subject with a lot of subtle inter-relationships.

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