The science of punching
To the uninformed, boxing is mindless violence. If you’ve ever been unlucky enough to see a drunken brawl, that might ring true. Let’s make the distinction now — anyone can fight, but few can box.
At its purest, boxing is an art form. It shares more similarities with ballet than fighting. It requires balance, flexibility, spatial awareness, reflexes, and creativity.
Power
Boxing is holistic. The fist is only the final part of an intricate, kinetic chain. Boxers don’t punch with their arms, they punch with their whole body. This is the foundation of good boxing. It’s important to understand and embrace this concept before anything else.
Picture a whip — the kind that Indiana Jones flourishes to good effect in the movies. When flicked using the correct technique, it generates inordinate amounts of energy. Did you know that the cracking sound a whip makes is a miniature sonic boom? Let that sink in for a moment.
The whip’s power comes from its uncanny ability to transfer power. It is fluid and flexible and allows power to travel towards the target with limited friction.
Good boxers work with that same principle. They generate power from their feet’s traction with the floor. This power then travels through their legs, hips, obliques, shoulders, and arms. Staying relaxed limits the friction between the start and endpoints of this chain.
Be like the whip — fluid and efficient. Tense, rigid muscles are obstacles to power. They consume it before it can detonate at the fist.
Try it out for yourself. Clench and unclench your fists every couple of seconds. Notice the changes you feel in your body. When you clench your fists, your forearms, biceps, and shoulders tighten up. Your body feels rigid. If I was a betting man, I’d wager that you might be holding your breath as you clench — another power inhibitor.
To recap — your aim is to generate power and allow it to travel through your body with as little friction as possible.
Leverage and weight distribution
There are four base punches in boxing. These are the:
jab
cross
hook
uppercut
As we have just established, we punch with our whole bodies. A punch is a biomechanical process — in simple terms, a linked chain of body movements. You’ll see this in any sport, for example, a golfer’s swing or a gymnast’s somersault.
In human physiology, our bodies move in different planes and around axis. If it helps, think of planes as sections of the body and axis as imaginary bars that run through it. To generate whole body power, leverage these sections around the bars.
Try to visualise that. Picture a rod running down through the middle of your body. See how rotating around that rod generates straight punches. Next, move the rod so that it runs down through one of your shoulders. Now the movement is uneven. One side rotates around the other, like the door hinges on a frame. This generates rotational power — hooks. You get the picture.
For our purposes, think of punches going through, around and up.
The jab and cross are straight punches that go through.
The hooks go around.
The uppercuts go up.
Control
Another aspect of proficient boxing is control. If you’ve ever moved a large barrel filled with water, you should understand this principle. You can move the barrel by tipping it slightly and rolling it on its rim, but what happens when you overcommit? The water has momentum of its own and tipped too far, it sloshes out, or even tips the barrel over.
This water in the barrel is exactly like the power you generate when punching. How you use and control this power is vital. Throw punches with controlled discipline. For example, if I throw a wild, lunging jab and overextend, I’ve lost control of my balance. The water is sloshing over the barrel’s rim. I’ve overloaded weight on my lead foot and can’t throw the natural rear hand punch that would follow with good balance. I’m also vulnerable to a counter-attack.
A good way to stay in control is to keep your chin behind your lead knee.
Special delivery
We now know that punching begins with your feet. You generate power with your whole body. How you deliver this power is crucial. Returning to our earlier analogy, the fist is the tip of the whip. As the sonic boom crack of the whip demonstrates, we are talking about a lot of power in a small surface area.
A 1985 study measured the force of former British heavyweight Frank Bruno’s punches. His punches to were comparable to a 6 kilogram wooden mallet, swung at 20 miles per hour. Few hit as hard as Big Frank, but it demonstrates why so many boxers experience hand problems.
It takes skill to punch with power and avoid injury. Keeping your fist unclenched relaxes the analogous muscles in your arms and shoulders. Immediately before impact, you must clench your fist. This protects your hand but also locks in the power. In this split second your body is rigid, before relaxing again as your return to guard or dial up the next punch. This quick transition takes time to get right. Once you do, you will notice a large increase in speed and power.
Your fist should land using the knuckles — but which knuckles? To begin with, I ask my boxers to aim with the large, middle knuckle. This lets the force distribute through the hand and gives more room for error. There is much debate about this. Legendary heavyweight Jack Dempsey placed importance on hitting with the ring finger knuckle. In the early days of training, this is a little dangerous for my liking. It makes it easier to land with the pinky, which will get you injured in a hurry.
Your wrist is another important pressure point to think about. Keep it straight on impact. Your hand, wrist, and forearm should form a straight line. You won’t need me to tell you if you get this wrong. Go easy — get the technique right first, Speed and power will soon follow.
Half a punch is not enough
Hitting the target is only 50% of your job completed. Return your hand to guard along the same path quicker than it went out.
Remember to breathe
Your breathing is crucial. Holding your breath affects muscles in your abdomen, chest, shoulders, and neck. You must be able to control your breathing, in this case exhaling with the punch. Learning new skills can be stressful, and you may find yourself holding your breath. Learn to notice it, relax, and breathe.
Keep your weight behind your shots
Throw your punches from as close to your body as possible. The more body weight you can keep behind your punches, the more powerful they will be. There is a defensive aspect to this too. Throwing a straight punch with a flared elbow opens up a gap around your chin that an opponent can fill with a fist. If you throw a wild hook, that same gap will appear. Be a friend to your chin by throwing disciplined punches.
Learn to punch from both feet
You must learn to punch going forwards and backwards. It’s essential to becoming a well-rounded boxer. The second clash between Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury is an excellent example. Wilder is a “one hitter quitter”. He is the quintessential slugger and has a right cross that can starch anyone. He stalks forward, looking for opportunities to unleash his signature finisher.
When it came to dealing with Wilder, conventional wisdom said that you should move away from him. Keeping him at range gives more time to see the cross coming. Nobody had tried pushing him backwards. That was, until Fury did exactly that. Wilder poleaxed Fury in the 12th round of their first encounter. Somehow the big Brit beat the count to carry on. After his head cleared, he pushed Wilder backwards in desperation. Fury is an intelligent boxer, and it was at that moment he knew how to deal with Wilder.
In the second fight Fury pushed Wilder backwards from the off. As he suspected, Wilder’s technique fell apart, ending in a comprehensive beat down. Wilder grew accustomed to opponents and sparring partners being deferent to his power. He was not conditioned to box going backwards.
Ready, aim …
Now you have a decent grasp of how to punch, it’s time to turn our attention to the where.
In amateur boxing, a contest has three possible outcomes:
A stoppage or knockout.
Disqualification — where one or both competitors infringe the rules.
A points decision — where one of the competitors “scores” with the most quality punches.
The first two speak for themselves, but how does a boxer score points?
To score, you must:
hit one of the scoring areas
punch with sufficient force
punch with the knuckle part of the glove
In an amateur boxing, competition gloves have a white area at the knuckles. This is to help the judges discern a scoring blow. The term “sufficient force” roughly translates to a punch with body weight behind it. The scoring areas are the front and sides of the body and above the belt line. You are not allowed to target the back of the head or neck, kidneys or anywhere “south of the border“.
There is a tendency — especially in novice boxers — to target the head and overlook the body. The body is the largest scoring area, so it would be remiss to ignore it. Not only that, body punching is very effective. It can debilitate an opponent even more than a punch to the head.
One key concept to bear in mind when punching to the body is your starting position. You must dip down and throw from a level that allows your chin and shoulder to be in direct line with the punch. Punching without dipping leaves your chin vulnerable.
Punching in combinations
It’s important to understand how punches work within combinations. Again, the touchstone principle is holistic punching. You must punch with your body to throw effective combinations.
Let’s look at a simple combination — a jab-cross-lead hook.
You throw the jab and transfer bodyweight to your rear foot, loading the power for your cross.
You throw the cross and transfer bodyweight to your lead foot, loading the power for your lead hook
You throw your lead hook.
It’s this transfer of body weight that generates “sufficient force”. The arms stay loose and guide this power to the target areas. A combination should speed up as it unfolds. As you add new skills you can string punches into sequences which can be subtle and deceptive. Like a good chess move, you may use one punch for the sole purpose of setting up another.
Escaping a combination
How you finish your combination is paramount. What’s the point in landing with punches, then letting your opponent hit you in return. Each combination should have an escape plan. Defences offer an easy out, but you can get a quick win by ending a combination with a lead hand punch. This takes you back to guard and reduces the target area your opponent has to target.
Watch where you punch
It may sound obvious, but it is a very common fault. Guide each punch to the target with your eyes to increase accuracy and power. Some boxers have a bad habit of closing their eyes when they punch. Keep yours peeled at all times.
Forgiving attack
You will come across “forgiveness” every day. It is an essential part of product design. Every so often we do foolish things. Forgiving design accepts that, but limits the consequences for us when we do. For example, there’s a good reason that bathrooms in Britain don’t have electrical sockets. It’s good that your microwave oven won’t operate unless you’ve closed the door. If you leave a bottle of pills lying around, the child-lock on the lid will bail you out if a rugrat investigates it. Forgiving design provides safety nets for when things go wrong.
If you go for a swim, you are going to get wet. Compete in boxing and you will get hit. There’s no way around it. But, building safety into your technique mitigates the damage when things go pear-shaped.
Examples include:
keeping your non-punching hand protecting your chin
tucking your chin behind your shoulder as you punch
moving your head as you punch
keeping your eyes on your opponent as you punch
maintaining balance
Sources:
Br Med J. (1985) The Damaging Punch.
Dempsey, Jack (1950) Championship Fighting.
