Any_Branch_4379 OP t1_jef0zgr wrote on March 31, 2023 at 3:17 PM

Reply to comment by Senrabekim in ELI5: why can’t someone who is light in weight punch as hard as someone who is heavier? by Any_Branch_4379

Wow, just wow. With all these bodily movements involved in a simple variation of a punch, it makes me just wonder and appreciate how these fighters are able to just ‘do them’ as though they were second nature.

What I meant by “whipping a punch” was basically involving your shoulders in the punching motion. Snapping your shoulders like a whip as you’re extending your arm to punch seems to also give it more force. That’s what I was told

clairostan t1_jef46xz wrote on March 31, 2023 at 3:38 PM

they're not able to do them by second nature. they've had to throw the same punches thousands of times since they were little kids to develop the technique they have. it's their job to be able to punch well. practice makes them good.

what you're talking about when you say whipping the punch to make it harder is basically just saying throwing it faster to make it hit harder, which is true. force = mass x acceleration and velocity is a component of acceleration. if you throw the punch with higher velocity, you're making one of the numbers you have to multiply to get your force output bigger, which makes the force itself bigger.

Senrabekim t1_jefb50z wrote on March 31, 2023 at 4:22 PM

This is a good start to thinking about fight physics, another thing from physics that you have to think about while training are Newton's laws of motion. The third comes up a lot for a strike.

If two bodies exert forces on each other, these forces have the same magnitude but opposite directions.

So I need my body to be a wall at the moment of impact, any give in me is less force that they have to take. So if I throw a hook, and do it with just my arm, and my feet arent set, my core and ass arent fully engaged and/or my legs are wobbly, then Im going to move and that will lessen the impact on my opponent.

Keeper151 t1_jefi67t wrote on March 31, 2023 at 5:08 PM

>What I meant by “whipping a punch” was basically involving your shoulders in the punching motion. Snapping your shoulders like a whip as you’re extending your arm to punch seems to also give it more force.

The whole body should be involved, toes to knuckles. A proper punch or kick involves almost every muscle in the body, even the ones in the non-striking arm or leg. That's why proper technique has a twisting motion to the hips; you add the momentum of the entire upper body, not just the arm reaching out to strike. In my experience, setting the upper back solid when striking seems to make the biggest difference in the amount of force delivered as it provides a kind of backstop to the shoulder as the force of the strike is being transferred. If you don't keep your shoulders solid, and have good arm alignment when you strike, the force generated by your legs and hips goes into bending your wrist or shoulder instead of transferring into your target.

Wrist rotation is not 100% necessary; it's a technique I've encountered in some martial arts and ignored in others with no discernable difference in speed or power. I've personally had better results not rotating the wrist as I seem to have better alignment without rotation, but that may be a practice thing. It's also easier to get boxer fractures of the ring & pinky knuckle with a horizontal fist than it is with vertical or slightly angled fist. The slight gain of the twist (which is in itself debatable) is easily offset by having good alignment of the bones when striking.