Could be tweaked.: Artistic License Martial Arts

I like that!

"The true master knows that there are no bones; bones are only limitations imposed by the untrained mind."

Change that to "joints", "tendons", or "ligaments" and that's a winner.

edited 20th Feb '12 8:57:59 PM by Willbyr

A good suggestion. ^_^

I'm not sure that "ligaments" flows as well as the other two, but I'm not sure which of those to prefer. Here they both are for comparison:

"The true master knows that there are no joints; joints are only limitations imposed by the untrained mind."

"The true master knows that there are no tendons; tendons are only limitations imposed by the untrained mind."

[edit] I think that I prefer "joints", so I'll vote for that version.

edited 21st Feb '12 10:36:50 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

That is also more accurate, tendons aren't the main thing that prevents you from moving like that.

If there are no joints, would he not be able to bend at all?

Oh, huh, maybe "bones" is better :P

That, or he'd be a flat, floppy mess that couldn't support its own because there were no joints to connect the bones to each other.

"No joints" could easily mean bones that don't bend at all, like: [1]◊.

Maybe "tendons" then...I can't remember a caption that we've fiddled with like this.

"Tendons" does flow better than "ligaments" :)

I think that my preference for "joints" was based on the thought that it presumes that one can only bend at those joints. When you give up on the belief that you can only bend at these "joints", you find that you can bend anywhere. :P

That said, the above interpretation (that "no joints" means no movement at all) seems likely to come up in other minds, making the "joints" version somewhat weaker, I fear.

As to bones, one might argue that if bones are a limitation imposed by the mind, then presumably something - likely the mind again - is keeping one upright, since it is a most convincing illusion. Of course, that runs afoul of the same interpretation issue as "joints" above, I imagine. :/

Ironically, if my (admittedly somewhat limited) understanding of human anatomy is correct, I imagine that one's own muscles would probably get in the way even if one's tendons/bones/etc. didn't, and one's skin would likely split. :P

Indeed, based on a quick look around online (on Wikipedia in particular), I suspect that pretty much all of tendons, ligaments muscles and joint types limit range of motion, although tendons likely only by their degree of elasticity (they joint muscle to bone; if the joint were moved too far, one would presumably end up pulling the muscle and tendon into a somewhat stretched arrangement).

It looks to me as though ligaments, however, are one of the main limiters - in particular, Wikipedia indicates that double-jointedness is caused by higher than usual elasticity of ligament - so I'm inclined to change my suggestion to either "ligaments", despite the poorer flow, or back to "bones".

[edit] Yay for long theses on caption wording! :P

edited 23rd Feb '12 10:37:08 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

Maybe we should just go for something simpler...

"How a master of kung-fu pulls off an Offhand Backhand. Apparently."

This has lagged long enough, and since we don't have a consensus on a caption, let's just lock up and move on.