[OT] Punching bags?

[Eraslin]

Hello,

Indeed this is an interesting discussion. As adndgamer points out, yes a stepping Shotokan punch can be slower than a typical shoulder punch. It's all in the practice though. I, personally, can rifle off a reverse punch or a forward jab much faster, and with far more power, than a shoulder-based punch.

When you're actually in a fight, you'd typically avoid most stepping motions in favour of the much faster shifting motions. Personally, I favour kicks -- but that's because I have very long legs, and can usually get a solid kick out before some people can even react. I've actually sparred with people, and seen people spar, that can launch a kick/punch in the time it takes me to blink (I've been caught a few times precisely because I blinked!).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it all boils down to practise. If you can punch better/faster/stronger with a shoulder-based punch, then by all means use that in a street fight. But practise the quick whole-body jabs, reverse punches, thrust kicks, stepping punches, shifting punches, etc -- with time you'll find that they become second nature.

Note for those who are picturing trying to throw their entire body weight into a technique: It all comes from the hips. All techniques are initiated with the hips, and the faster and stronger that you can initiate that movement, the faster/stronger your technique will be. Basically, the feet stay planted and the hips twist into the motion, bringing the upper body with them -- then it's just a matter of timing the strike so that it's fully extended precisely when the hip's finished moving.

Side note: If anyone really wants to learn how to punch, look into getting a machiwara board. But be warned, if you don't know the proper punching techniques you can really hurt yourself on one of these. Striking one amounts to hitting a spring board; if your strike isn't solid the board will, quite literally, throw you back. In the clubs I've been in, a no one below 4th Kyu (purple belt -- note that Kyu levels count down, so 5th Kyu is below 4th Kyu) is even allowed to hit one because they typically haven't developed their technique well enough to not get hurt.

Hoping this most interesting discussion continues,
Eraslin

Interesting piece of trivia: Slightly off the topic of punches. The knife hand strike was, as I've been told, initially designed to strike between the vertical pieces of bamboo in armor -- thereby rendering the armor useless.

EDIT: Added caveat about machiwara boards.

 

[ThenHeCame]

Hiya!

Solid advice. In my entire athletic career ( 10 years in Greco-Roman, 8 years in Judo and 3 years of Brazllian Jiu Jitsu ) I've dealt with punching bags alot. Never been in a strikeing art myself, my last trip to japan ( Pancrase ) gave me some wonderful tips I'd like to share with you.

First off, if this has something to do with "Street fighting "or Self Defense, then you are barking up the wrong tree. If this is your desire, then attempt to find local some seminars or tactical instructors becuase thats just getting to the point instead of flubbing around in the local Dojo/Dojang. Just being blunt here.

Second, Don't worry over theroy and technique. You haven't really expressed any intrest in the martial arts so don't give it a second glance. Just worry about makeing sure your form is healthy and will not cuase any real injury. Advice given covers that fine.

Now that we got that out of the way, lets focus on the thrid reason. Better health. The best reason for getting a bag The simple act of punching bags for a period of time is a great cardio workout. Make sure to warm up before hand and afterwards and rink plenty of water. Stretching is key here to prevent injury.

You can actually acheive a full body work out and stretching with just a heavy bag alone if you can detach it easy enough. If anyone is intrested I'll go into detail

 

[Eraslin]

Hello all,
I pointed out this thread to a friend of mine, and he wanted me to post the following.


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Hello. I am the 11-year practitioner Eraslin mentions, and I am not a member so he is posting this for me. Most of what's been said here has been fairly solid, particularly Eraslin (naturally!), adndgamer, and enforcer. I would like to add a few points.

First, I would like to somewhat disagree with the fellow who said he'd wished he'd had a bag when he started karate. While I sometimes feel this way too, on the whole, for karate (not speaking for boxing) a bag can often produce results contrary to what one is trying to develop. The reason for this is that if you try to hit a bag hard, it both gives and moves; it moves more than it gives. thus, one develops a punch that has a lot of push behind it, but no fixed focus. That is, a very brute-force punch. Now, this is not necessarily a _bad thing at all; boxing punches can be quite brutal. This is backed upby the size of boxers, and the fact that there are weight categories in boxing: bigger is an advantage. Now, one of my karate teachers is retired, and around 58 years old. He is not big. He is not heavy. Yet he can punch me hard enough to lift me off the ground and throw me back several feet. Why? Well, other than year's of experience, it's because he has trained his punch to act not as a bludgeon, but as a bullet. (yes, I know a bullet uses pure force. give me a minute). Consider the analogy of hammering a nail. You can whack away at it with a flurry of blows. If you do lots of nailing, you will probably eventually be strong enough to get a nail in with one or 2 whacks. However, while you're doing this you will probably hit your thumb a few times. Now, consider instead focusing on learning to push the hammer from its starting point to the board, and stopping there; ignore the nail in between. Again, with practice, you'll be able to drive the nail with a single blow. (you may still get your thumb!). However, in the first case, you are learning to push the nail into the board. In the second case you are learning to transfer your powerdirectly to the nail. Since it's pointy (you did remember to buy pointy nails, right?) it's much more efficient at penetrating than you or the hammer.

I'm not sure that made any sense, but in the hope that it does, I'm going to leave it. But, let me put it much more succinctly. Which do you think would hurt more: Being hit by a car, or having someing park a car in you?! If your brain is having trouble with this, pretend you're standing in front of a concrete wall. Now, the car can either ram into you, go through the wall, and keep going, or it can 'park' with its grill a millimeter from the wall (and you in between). OK, this is untenable for a human, so let's replace it with a piece of metal. In the first scenario, the metal, by virtue of being smashed through the wall, is going to exhibit some resilience: it will try to spring back (somewhat) to its original shape. In the second scenario, the car stays, and thus the metal stays bent (the car is riding on a rail which prevents it from being able to bounce back). Ok, so, thecar represents the power you generate. Bags encourage you to generate the first sort of power: take out the bit of metal, the wall, and keep right on going. This is effective, but takes a lot of power. In contrast, the second scenario (car 'parks') relies largely on the ability to _stop. You can get away with going slower (in the car), as long as you don't stop until you're touching the wall. If you have a smaller car, you can make up for it by going faster and having better brakes. Thus, the second kind of punch can be performed by someone who does not look like mike tyson. Proof of this is my karate teacher cleverly asking one of his female students to "kick like you mean it". She did, and he wound up on the floor. Anyway, there it is. A makiwara board, as Eraslin mentioned, is very good at training just this type of punch: It forces you to stop and hold.

The use of the whole body is often misunderstood. Many people think karate is slower because it uses the "whole body". I've also had people tell me that boxing is better because _it teaches you to put the whole body behind a bunch, and not just your shoulders!!! these are both terrible misconceptions. First, my experience leads me to the conclusion that _both karate and boxing put the body into the punch. Or rather, _can do it. Yes, in boxing, you can choose not to commit fully, instead exchanging a flurry of blows: but you're still looking for that one killer punch that you can put everything behind, aren't you? The better the boxer, the closer the flurry of blows is to being full power. When a boxer throws his body into a punch, he's throwing his body mass in exactly the same way as in the first car analogy above. On the other hand, the karateka throws his body into the punch in 2 ways. The first is similar to a boxer: if you're in motion, momentum gives you extra force. momentum is mass times velocity: what you lack in size you can make up for in speed. The second way, however, is for the karateka to learn to snap every muscle in his/her body to a tight sudden contraction at the moment of impact. why? This is the 'parking' effect. If for a moment you lock your entire body rigid, it can't move (much). But, you've generated all this momentum, and Newton's laws state that this momentum must be conserved. Where does it go? Well, if you punch a concrete wall, it goes into turning your hand into a bloody pulp. But if you're like me, you've probably never been attacked by a concrete wall. So, what if it's a person. Well, even if they're good, anticipating the _exact moment of your muscular-rigidity is difficult. For an untrained opponent it's impossible. So, all that energy you've generated it transferred into them.... where it does damage. Damage which is possibly more likely to stay done, because it can't spring back (you're 'parked'). It has been theorized that the sudden stop in this method of punching generates a shock wave into the target, and the muscle-contraction prevents the shockwave rebounding into the puncher, instead reflecting all the energy back into the target.

Now, the better the karateka, the shorter that period of muscular rigidity becomes. By third degree, it is essentially imperceptible.

But one more thing to address here: Karateka are slower because they have to get into a powerful stance. Not necessarily true, though a deeper stance is probably always _more powerful. Have you heard of the bruce lee one-inch punch? Well, that's essentially what this is. The better you get at that moment of total contraction, the less you become dependent upon things like stance and starting position. I've known men and women who could knock you over just by putting a hand on your chest and suddenly contracting their muscles hard. So, when people say whole body punching is good but slow, they are thinking of punching that requires _movement of the entire body. This is not necessarily required.

That said, in a street fight, you don't use a technique that you are training in the hopes that it will one day be effective. You use whatever you happen to be good at for the moment, and anything you happen to find lying around to boot!

Next point. I am aware from doctor friends of mine of what a boxer's fracture is: this is the breaking of the bones in the 2 smallest fingers of your hand. The cause is 2-fold. First, a typical boxing hook centers the contact imperfectly: it is very easy to land the punch on these 2 bones, which are weak compared to the other fingers. (I say it's imperfect because boxers use gloves that don't typically let you pinpoint which part of the hand you're hitting with.) Second, in boxing you are gripping a lead donut or some such inside the glove. This gives support to the hand which, combined with the glove, means you don't break it.... WHILE WEARING THE GLOVE. Thus, boxer's go out into the street and break their fingers punching without gloves. I believe even Mike Tyson has been guilty of this one, and he's quite and amazing boxer.

Second last point: boxer's are fast and powerful. A decent boxer will throw way more punches than an equivalently trained karateka. However, not all will land, and as we discussed above, there is a sacrifice in power to achieve this flurry. In contrast, the karateka is looking for a few good blows. A friend of mind boxed with someone to perform this experiment. The comment from my friend was essentially, "boxers throw lots of fast punches". The comment from the boxer was "Karateka suddenly switch directions and come at you with a few fast, devastating techniques. Neither is wrong. Neither will win every time. I choose karate because I believe (based upon the age and ability of my various teachers) that I will be able to be effective far longer than if I chose boxing. My first karate teacher called this "young man's sport/art/etc", meaning that it's something your body can't keep up indefinitely.

 

[ThenHeCame]

The above theroy is really straining to prove itself. With alot of Mixed Martial Art comptetions happening in the 90s, I've yet to see a documented win by tradtionalist useing above mentioned technique. Fun to learn in the Dojo, pulling it off against a comptetior in a ring/cage just isn't pluasable.