Punches

[terryl965]

How do you train punches and what is the one draw back you are finding to be the most probmathic for you?

 

[terryl965]

For me it is my right wrist been broke three times and fracture another five so it is so much weeker than my left. I tape it and it still hurts when throwing punches at full speed and a palm strike or ridgehand just send pain though the entire arm. They want to put a pin in it but I have said no, so it is something I must overcome within myself.

 

[SageGhost83]

I am sorry to hear of your injuries. It takes real guts to continue punching after you have been injured that many times, you are awesome. We train punches by going into ye olde horse stance and training the "form" of the punch for a long time. Then we train punches on focus mitts to improve accuracy, then we go to the heavy bag for power. For a WTF school, we devote a lot of time to punches :lol2:.

 

[terryl965]

I am sorry to hear of your injuries. It takes real guts to continue punching after you have been injured that many times, you are awesome. We train punches by going into ye olde horse stance and training the "form" of the punch for a long time. Then we train punches on focus mitts to improve accuracy, then we go to the heavy bag for power. For a WTF school, we devote a lot of time to punches :lol2:.

I do not know it is guts or stupidity like the wife BoricuaTKD says, but you are right for a WTF school you really work punches. good for your instructor.

 

[dancingalone]

I work regularly with a makiwara for hand conditioning and for developing a forceful, penetrating punch. I also use a boxing speed back for hand speeding and smoothness. Finally, a heavy bag is essential for practicing varying combinations in conjunction with moving footwork.

Punching in the air doesn't cut it.

 

[exile]

Having damaged my hand a couple of years ago with a punching strike to a stack of board (yes, the stack broke, but that wasn't the only thing ) I've gotten kind of gunshy about punching, at least to hard targets. A densely packed heavy bag is about the greatest resistance I feel comfortable punching. My handstrike repertoire mostly consists of palm-heel strikes (which and be just as damaging and don't face you with the risk of an incapacitating fracture, even delivered very hard), hammerfist strikes, and especially knifehand strikes.

After those ten weeks in a handsplint, I'm just not that anxious to do risk any further injuries, which I suppose tends to have an inhibiting effect...

 

[Xue Sheng]

Use to train various strikes on a heavy bag now I train only punches on a heavy bag and palm strikes on a heavy bag and trees. But other than loosing concentration a couple of weeks ago and not doing the palm strike right and giving myself a minor wrist strain I have no major problems.

 

[Kacey]

How do you train punches and what is the one draw back you are finding to be the most probmathic for you?

How I train punches depends on what I'm working on. For focus, I find aiming at a solid object (like, say, a cinder block wall) really makes me pay attention to what I'm doing, whether or not my shoulders are straight, if I'm being consistent about my focal point and how my hips are moving - because the first time you punch a brick wall, you will know what you've done wrong! Another good focus drill is to aim at a person - start with the solar plexus, then move to the nose, punch full speed and full power - and touch. Just remember, your target will be aiming at you next!

For power, I use a focus pad or a wavemaster, depending on whether there's someone around to hold the pad or not. A heavy bag is good too, but there's not always one available.

My biggest problem is generally aiming at a point, without thinking about what's behind it; that's the purpose of the "nose target" drill - being able to hit what you're aiming for without regard to what is behind or beside it, and also to become accustomed to aiming at a person instead of a pad or bag.

 

[Brad Dunne]

I'm sure what I'm about to post has been posted somewhere/time before on MT and most likely was cause for a strong debate, but here goes.......

The vast majority of folks were taught to punch with the "karate twist". The problem with doing a punch as such is that it's very easy to hurt the wrist because the wrist angle is in a weakened position when making contact. Bruce Lee advocated a punch that the wrist stayed verticle and thus negated the improper wrist alignment problem. If I'm not mistaken, many of the CMA's folks adhear to the same principle. It's very easy to prove this to yourself. Just hit the heavy bag both ways and see which one feels the strongest and offers less of a threat for injury.

 

[K31]

I'm sure what I'm about to post has been posted somewhere/time before on MT and most likely was cause for a strong debate, but here goes.......

The vast majority of folks were taught to punch with the "karate twist". The problem with doing a punch as such is that it's very easy to hurt the wrist because the wrist angle is in a weakened position when making contact. Bruce Lee advocated a punch that the wrist stayed verticle and thus negated the improper wrist alignment problem. If I'm not mistaken, many of the CMA's folks adhear to the same principle. It's very easy to prove this to yourself. Just hit the heavy bag both ways and see which one feels the strongest and offers less of a threat for injury.

That's interesting because I was taught to twist my punch in previous instruction and that is the technique I use if we are asked to break something but they don't teach it or practice it in my current school. I'll have to try your experiment.

 

[FearlessFreep]

How do you train punches and what is the one draw back you are finding to be the most probmathic for you?

I hurt my wrist a few months back on some intense wrist locks and now if I'm not very careful on the squareness of my strike, my wrist twists and re-aggravates. It's easy to keep focused on heavy bags, but sparring against a moving opponent who is trying to block it's hard to keep aligned

 

[morph4me]

I use a heavy bag and concentrate on relaxing, punching straight off my shoulder and getting maximum penetration. I try to make sure the bag moves when I hit it, and if someone is holding it I try to rock them.

 

[granfire]

We train punches, bag and target and such.

My biggest problem, my reach is not that great and I don't like getting hit

So I prefer kicking....

 

[jim777]

I'm hyper careful of my hands and especially wrists because I've been a musician for so long (since '72). I have two motorcycles I switch between because I don't want one angle causing my arms or wrists stress (ok, that's what I told the wife anyway :lol: )I really dislike doing anything to my hands that causes them more than a bit of pain in general, and watch out for things like carpal tunnel onset all the time. For most hand techniques I'm fine, but I wouldn't wail all day on a makiwara to get my knuckles like rock because of the musician thing.

So, for the most part it isn't an issue, but I do get very antsy when we're doing Hapkido locks and escapes and such. Those are the hand techniques that raise my blood pressure, so to speak I love TKD and the Martial Arts in general, but I'm a musician first and that's not going to change, ever.

 

[newGuy12]

In the future, I may construct (actually contract a carpenter to construct) an inside makiwara, but I have not done that yet.

Hehe -- here I was, thinking that punching just leads to pushing the partner back into kicking range, where everyone is more happy to be.

:boing2:

 

[exile]

I'm sure what I'm about to post has been posted somewhere/time before on MT and most likely was cause for a strong debate, but here goes.......

The vast majority of folks were taught to punch with the "karate twist". The problem with doing a punch as such is that it's very easy to hurt the wrist because the wrist angle is in a weakened position when making contact. Bruce Lee advocated a punch that the wrist stayed verticle and thus negated the improper wrist alignment problem. If I'm not mistaken, many of the CMA's folks adhear to the same principle. It's very easy to prove this to yourself. Just hit the heavy bag both ways and see which one feels the strongest and offers less of a threat for injury.

I don't know if there's much to debate here or not—I've seen detailed discussion of the problems with skeletal support that the classic twisting karate punch causes, as vs. the position of the radius, scaphoid and other bones when aligned for the 'vertical fist'. So far, the arguments I've seen have been pretty convergent on the weaknesses of the twisting punch. I'm not sure where the twisting punch originated from; it's certainly employed freely in karate kata and their KMA spinoffs, but I've never seen any kind of historical account of where that punch comes from.

The thing to do would be to try to identify whether the oldest Okinawan hand techs used such punches or not. A lot of Okinawan karate seems to rest on a platform of Chinese techniques, and my understanding, at any rate, is that the twisting punch is often not the movement of choice in CMA punching. I have a specific reason for wondering about the Okinawan tech: it's that in Japan—where the original bunkai for the Okinawan kata weren't widely taught, as Higake reports in his recent book on the Pinan/Heian kata set—it's possible that the twisting movement of the retraction chamber really was taught as the 'windup' for the punch, rather than the grabbing/securing/anchoring that that hitake movement seems to have been intended for, to trap the attacker and set up and elbow lock or something along those lines. If this scenario were correct, then we'd expect the Japanese karateka to see the twisting fist as simply the payoff/replay of the twisting preparation they thought the retraction to be. The Okinawans, knowing that a grab/trap was involved, wouldn't have made that same mistake, and their punch techs would be much more likely to be independent of the twist in the retraction 'phase'. If this scenario is correct, it would mean that the twisting punch came in in the transfer of karate to Japan...

Probably all wrong, of course. Does anyone have any ideas about what really happened?

 

[Xue Sheng]

A lot of Okinawan karate seems to rest on a platform of Chinese techniques, and my understanding, at any rate, is that the twisting punch is often not the movement of choice in CMA punching.

And as far as I know you are correct sir.

There are a lot of different hand strikes in CMA but to those things I would classify as a punch, as we classify them in the USA, I have not yet seen a twisting punch as it is used in Karate. The 2 punches I have seen are, as Brad Dunne said, the vertical fist and then there is also a horizontal but it is a palm up punch.

 

[rabbit]

The hardest part I find to do is conditioning my hands to stike hard surfaces.

 

[Em MacIntosh]

I warm up the cartilage with light shots progressively making them harder. I use bare knuckles on a canvas bag and like to glance on purpose so it scrapes and "dusts" them. This numbs them and I settle into heavy impact hooks, uppercuts etc. I agree with the wrist being vertical being far more pragmatic but to each their own.

 

[Atomic22]

I have found that if you do pushups on your fists or fingers that your punch strength as well as your wrist strength increase. In fact, Tte wrist has no muscle, but by doing such push ups you increase the size of the muscle in between your thumb and forefinger which absorbs some of the shock that usually goes to your wrist when you punch.

If you had not broken your wrist I would have also suggested doing pushups on your wrists. By doing so, you increase the resilience of the cartilage and surrounding bone because of the microfractures that occur when exerting such force on your wrists. Doing too many, however, will result in Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (search it on wikipedia) and the only cure is either: surgery, or constantly cracking your wrists to relieve the pressure (v. annoying trust me...) So basically these are really good but only up to a certain point. A good rule of thumb is: when you can do more than 20 in a row STOP and never do them again, especially if you do them on a hard surface.


I Hope that gives you another approach to training your punches.