For years, fans of professional sports-entertaining have been puzzled as to why many combatants often slap their thighs at the precise moment of delivering a superkick or similar strike, but a new study reveals that thigh-slappage makes the maneuvers up to 97 percent more powerful.

“We can’t fully explain the biomechanics of it,” said Dr. Leon Kirschbaum of the Harvard Center for Sports Entertainmentology, “but slapping one’s thigh indeed makes someone hit harder.”

Some jaded skeptics have long suggested that the slapping of one’s thigh is a simple theatrical trick to create the auditory illusion of a more powerful strike than has actually been delivered.

But according to the new study, strikes accompanied by a thigh-slap are five times more likely to result in a pinning predicament than moves in which the aggressor’s thigh remains unslapped.

While scientists have not yet fully explained the phenomenon, they believe it may be related to the recent discovery that stomping one’s foot makes punches hurt more.