Basically, sometimes during a UFC fight when someone gets hit really hard or gets knocked out they will go completely stiff for a second. Why does that happen?
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What your talking about is most likely the “fencing response.” If you are familiar with the very polite sword fighting where two people in puffy white suits seem to take turns with each stab. Just because it kinda looks like them about to fight, but on their back.
Our muscles are controlled by our brain. Our brains have a lot of parts. Some focus on things like breathing, or swallowing. We need these to be alive. Some do things like figure out what tv show we want to watch. Not that important if we just want to be alive. Two main parts of our brain are the important things to living and the unimportant.
Since living things are always doing their best to live, our brains organized in a way where the part that talks to the rest of our body can handle the important to life bits, we call that the stem. It is like a handle at the bottom just before your spine that makes all the confusing jumbled brain messages into short notes to tell muscles what to do and then sends them off into the body.
When you get hit hard enough the brain squishes inside your skull. Your brain fits in your skull really well but if you hit your head hard enough to knock you out, well your brain took that hit inside your skull! Yikes! The brain doesn’t like moving like that. All the complex things like picking a tv show no longer matter to the brain stem as they become too messy for it to send to the body.
The brain stem still has a job to do: keep you alive! Just like when you were a baby. The brain stem was doing the hard work as the rest of your brain learned more. And when the brain stem takes over because you were hit so hard your brain reverts to baby mode.
That weird position people fall into mostly has one arm strait out, one more bent at the elbow out. Body stiff. That is our brainstem, confused itself, trying to reach and grab at random just like a baby. It is lopsided because the brain stem is also trying to organize itself back into behaving and is in a bit of an argument about what to do. But because that part is so basic, like breathing, it comes out the same result.
So what happens when we get hit and stiffen up. Well your brain is hurt, your best part of your brain is too hurt to work. The brain stem keeps you alive by turning your body into a baby, hoping the rest of your brain gets time to make sense again.
This explanation has been vetted by a 5 year old.
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