Punching with Power (my article submission)

9chambers · Posted On: 6/10/2005 11:58pm

Good article.

I actually saw a documentary on boxing on the History Channel (I think) the other day that claimed Dempsey soaked his hands in horse urine and soaked his face and hands in pickle juice to make them tougher. I'm not sure if that's true or if it was just something they spread around for publicity. They also said the guy was a bare knuckle brawler for years before entering pro boxing. I wonder how many fights he won if you count those matches. Amazing.

**Lefty** · Posted On: 6/11/2005 6:04am

Great article!

Jack Dempsey's cool.

**Lights Out** · Posted On: 6/11/2005 6:30am

Jack Dempsey´s official record.

Just in case anybody is interested and can´t be bothered to search for it. Anyway, I think the records of those times are inaccurate at best.

As for the footwork in hitting, I´ve noticed that people who hit hard (in boxing) tend to stay flat feeted, at least when they´re throwing hard punches. I´ve noticed that my punches are harder when I´m flat feeted too. Maybe it has soemthign to do with balance.

I don´t think it is strange that some styles have the same principles for punching. After centuries of development, it seems that there are just a couple of ways to punch with the most efficency. Which is the point of Koto´s article, if I´m correct.

Proof is the little boxing has eveloved (technicaly) since Dempsey´s times (leaving aside changes in rules and socirng; until the 40´s or maybe 50´s "dancers -steppers- where penalized and sometimes disqualified and not paid because they were "avoiding confrontation"). If you take a look at Mike Tyson in his prime, he had a very similar style to that of Dempsey, but with Floyd Patterson´s guard. The latter can be best explained becasue he was trained by the same man who trained Patterson, Cus D´Amato.

**VikingPower** · Posted On: 6/11/2005 7:42am

Thanks for the comments all. My main focus was not to teach just one way of how to punch, but rather give you additional information on ways how to add punching already to your own styles. For example, the Bujinkan relies mostly on footwork and shifts to get the most weight behind their punches, but if I were to add in a good shoulder drive to it I'd add more power. You don't have to change up what you already use, it's just additional things you can add to make your strikes stronger.

As for the article, I mostly concentrated on just showing on overall movement. Kiai, timing, counter-punching, targets, etc. take a lot of additional explanation and I mostly wanted to concentrate on total body movement. Omar's right though, there's also a lot of other factors, even including psychology ("punching through the target" rather than at the target).

**Omar** · Posted On: 6/11/2005 9:14am

Incidentally, this article of yours cleared up a lot about what you were thinking in the past. I can see that wehn I was "arguing" with you before it was really just different styles of communication clashing and a little different feeling about how to think about how to get power but that you really do think about this pretty similarly to how I do.

To be honest, I think I probably suffered a bit from my general predjudice about body-builders or powerlifters. I give you mad props for what you've accomplished on that front and in my experience, nearly everyone who has put that much time and energy into pure strength development has a STRONG tendency to sort of place disproportionate emphasis on how various muscle groups work together.

I should have given you more credit in the past.

I particularly like this comment:

...but if I were to add in a good shoulder drive to it I'd add more power. You don't have to change up what you already use, it's just additional things you can add to make your strikes stronger....

One of the ways my training in China has been really different is how my current teacher presents all this numerous ways of getting more power and does NOT emphasise one over the other but rather first tries to teach one and then sees if you can add another...and then another.....and another...and so on. Like Baji has these 6 essential kinds of power and any one of them is pretty good. If you can combine 2 or 3 at the same time you are already a solid puncher. Get all 6 and that's 1 punch body shots that drop you to your knees. Then hypothetically there's other stuff you could add.

I partially lied because he DOES emphasise certain aspects over others but they are not the technical ones. he stresses that "real" power comes from complete unification of "qi", intent, and physical strength. Ignore whatever "qi" means to you and just take it as saying that the complete unification of the physical, emotional, psychological, intelectual, technical and whatever other components there are....everything coming together as one for that punch....THAT is what gives you power. The rest is just details.

I don't think I'm up for that article.

Good thread by the way.

**Physics_Nazi** · Posted On: 6/11/2005 11:51am

Originally Posted by Koto_Ryu

. Without proper footwork, you won't get your body weight behind your punches and will be "arm punching" (not getting your weight behind your punches). Everyone knows the old F=ma formula, where Force (e.g. the impact of your punch) = mass (your weight in motion) x acceleration (how fast you're going). If you're a 200lb man and your arm weighs about 40lbs, if you just arm punch you'll only hit with about 40lbs of force. Take a step with that punch, however, and you'll have 200lbs behind that punch. I think it's pretty obvious which choice we want, isn't it?

The F=m*a logic is misleading. Force is the cause, acceleration of a mass is the effect.

There is a force to do with the slowing down of a moving object when it encounters another object. This makes assumptions final conditions which I won't go into in detail but essentially a good approximation is the "Kinetic Energy = 1/2*m*v^2", divided by the distance of penetration into the object "d" (which depends on the hardness of the object). The m is the mass utilised in the strike as free flight moving object (launching your bodyweight forward).

A further addition to the total force is the driving through on impact (or aiming behind the target). You may have mentioned this but for completeness I include it.

Summary of what you are getting at:
Ftotal= KE/d + Fdriving through

You can increase KE by increasing the mass in the strike.

**Shillelagh** · Posted On: 6/11/2005 12:27pm

Originally Posted by Omar

The falling step + the "grab" is the main "secret" to Baji style hitting.

Would you happen to know if anything like that is used in Xingyi?

And I hate to ask you this, 'cause it's proabably an essay question, but could you elaborate a little on these "6 kinds of power" in Baji? I'm probably requesting alot, so if you don't care to answer, that's fine, but I'm simply too curious not to ask.

Thank you.

**VikingPower** · Posted On: 6/11/2005 1:23pm

Originally Posted by Omar

Incidentally, this article of yours cleared up a lot about what you were thinking in the past. I can see that wehn I was "arguing" with you before it was really just different styles of communication clashing and a little different feeling about how to think about how to get power but that you really do think about this pretty similarly to how I do.

Glad this helped clear some stuff up then :thumbsup:

To be honest, I think I probably suffered a bit from my general predjudice about body-builders or powerlifters. I give you mad props for what you've accomplished on that front and in my experience, nearly everyone who has put that much time and energy into pure strength development has a STRONG tendency to sort of place disproportionate emphasis on how various muscle groups work together.

I'm actually a strongman wannabe more than both of those :glasses2: And from what I've noticed they tend to stick with the simpler something is, the better it is for you. That's why you'll see them picking up heavy rocks in their backyard while the bodybuilders are shooting drugs into their ass and doing their 50th set of kickbacks. Simple but effective, and is a lot better for you overall than bodybuilding. Good to see that this helped show where I was coming from a bit better too.

**VikingPower** · Posted On: 6/11/2005 1:34pm

Originally Posted by Physics_Nazi

The F=m*a logic is misleading. Force is the cause, acceleration of a mass is the effect.

There is a force to do with the slowing down of a moving object when it encounters another object. This makes assumptions final conditions which I won't go into in detail but essentially a good approximation is the "Kinetic Energy = 1/2*m*v^2", divided by the distance of penetration into the object "d" (which depends on the hardness of the object). The m is the mass utilised in the strike as free flight moving object (launching your bodyweight forward).

A further addition to the total force is the driving through on impact (or aiming behind the target). You may have mentioned this but for completeness I include it.

Summary of what you are getting at:
Ftotal= KE/d + Fdriving through

You can increase KE by increasing the mass in the strike.

I was trying to keep it as simple as possible, and considering I don't take physics until the fall semester, F=ma sounded the best to me.