this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
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me_irl
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In martial arts you're taught to vocalize as you hit, it makes you hit harder
It's the same principle behind the dad sounds when you get up or sit down. Adding vocalization gives better control over the muscles.
Yeah, to those that don't know, 'Ous' or 'Osu' is a pretty common exclamation/vocalization in Karate (and likely other Japanese martial arts), that serves this function, or also just generally is used to indicate ethusiastic compliance with a command.
The concept itself is 'Kiai' (key-eye):
https://karateexplained.com/vault/kiai-in-karate/
Roughly, it translates to something like 'Spirit Shout' or more literally 'Spirit Unification'.
To try to de-woo or de-mystify it a bit... it makes you more aware of your own breathing, it forces a repeated pattern of usage of your core muscles when executing a strike.
The core muscles... that in particular is very important.
An attack does not simply come from or involve only your arm or leg.
It is an entire kinetic and kinematic manuever that involves every part of your body; every muscle group, every joint, contributes at least something to the strike, or even block or dodge or feint.
In my training, there was an incredible amount of emphasis on using your hips, your waist, to act as ... basically the origin point of a crack of a whip, where the particular hand or foot doing the attack is the tip of the whip... your entire body is the whip, despite the seeming external simplicity of many basic attacks and blocks.
Is "ous" applicable if end up subbing at an orgy in japan then??
... probably not, no.
Ous/Osu is ... generally seen as a kind of brutish/meathead/dudebro/gymrat kind of word, by many Japanese who are not martial artists.
Its... not like everyone in Japan is a martial artist.
Ous/Osu is a word that, to myknowledge, is only really used seriously by martial artists, most others would only use it ironically, to pantomime being a big strong fighter person.
If you were just in an orgy in Japan, using ous or osu would be something like you performatively acting like a chud, something like that, kind of.
That's my personal take on it, anyway, here is another:
https://www.adamcarter.us/respecting-cultural-context-osu-it-isnt-always-appropriate/
Hell yeah, thanks. I love languages and you got my gears turning is all
You're allowed to put more than one sentence in a paragraph, encouraged even, especially when those sentences are all very directly related.
I write on mobile, its formatted fine for mobile.
I read on mobile. I didn't say it wasn't fine, it's definitely fine, I said it could be different. And in my opinion, that difference would make it slightly better. It just reads kinda stilted and disjointed to me, like separate unrelated thoughts, when it's actually just one point being made.
In karate when I was a kid, we learned to say "pay", though I doubt that is how it was spelt.
I (and my fellows) were taught to start with just either 'osu' or literally verbalizing the kiai as 'ki-ai', but were also told that many different sounds can work, do what works for you after you get the basic concept down.
Some stuck with osu/ous or kiai, others ended up with something like hai or sai or ee-sah or 'tsah or 'tsuh or 'tsuu...
Many possible variants... i remeber hearing 'go with your gut', entirely unironically.
EDIT: Now that I think about it more, if you kept track of who was making what kind of kiai sound at a tournament, you could probably be reasonably confident as to which dojo they were from, at least at beginner to intermediate levels, hah!
Oh yeah, I’d guess the vocalization was very kwanjangnim dependent lol
... Kwan Jang Nim?
You learned... Soo Bahk Do? or Moo Duk Kwan?
I've never even heard of that.
... its... kind of sort of related to Tae Kwon Do, but also has influence from Shotokan Karate and... Taekkyeon?
Oh lordy, the 'family tree' of martial arts just never gets any simpler...
I learned Shito-Ryu... which as far as I can tell, has no Korean influence, but eventually everything goes back to Okinawan Te and Chinese Kung Fu, in some manner or another...
I wonder if we have in common any Katas.
Seienchin, perhaps?
To be honest, it was a local neighborhood place run by a white guy, ostensibly Tae Kwon Do, and we called the main teacher kwanjangnim Joe (though we pronounced it "kwah-ja-nim")
It really does and is supported by science!
It helps by tensing up the core muscles and also helps with timing movements by having things come together on the exhale.
I don't know about that. But once, with a few buddies, we tried to push start a car and it only worked when we started yelling.
Probably your sick martial arts skills tbh
Yelling (and being around other yelling people) would dump more adrenaline into your bodies and effectively give you all a potentially significant short term strength boost.
War cries are a thing for actual reasons beyond intimidation, lol.
I mean kind of, it's mostly that your diaphragm releasing adds a sort of "push" to your blood.
Like, if you're stretching and you wanna stretch a little further you breathe out. I'm a little fuzzy on the biology of it all but it has something to do with that
I think we are basically both right.
Doing outwardly aggressive things like yelling and screaming does release adrenaline, and that will basically give you increased pain resistance, strength, better/faster reflexes.
It also raises your heart rate and thus increases blood flow and oxygenation levels.
I don't know that moving your diaphragm substantially would... directly somehow move your blood more or faster, but it would trigger a bunch of other hormonal reinforcing loops that would lead to your heart pumping faster/harder, i think, if you're substantially flexing it in a way that you typically do not.
I've heard the same thing about playing volleyball.
and tennis
I wonder if it's the same thing in tennis?