Transcription
Okay, simply put, the strongest punch the body can generate is a reverse punch. That we call in karate, or the straight right or straight left, depending on your Orthodox or southpaw in boxing. All right.
Some may argue about the hook. For the hook, even though it's a very effective punch and it's very strong because it rattles the jaw and, you know, making the head shake and, you know, producing knockouts, it's nowhere near the force that can be derived from the core of our body. Okay.
That reverse punch, turning your body, turn your body looks like this. The strike is at the end of my shoulder and hip turn. Okay. Generate it from the floor to my hips to the target, to the target this way. Okay. Faster motion looks like this. You may be able to hear it. So that's what you want to practice.
But let's incorporate some basic moves before that. First part of punching correctly starts with the basic fist. Now, a lot of people may not have learned the real proper way of making a fist, and I'm gonna, you know, share some history with you. Well, first of all, you should roll your fingers up to where you cannot see your fingernails. And can now, this is very important, the wrapping of the thumb. This is where we wrap our thumb. Now, there's a mechanics to this thumb, even though it seems innocuous.
But the first way in Okinawa Te, the beginnings of karate, the fist was this way. What was important about that is because stabilizing the wrist, utilizing the, there's a muscle called the flexor pollicis longus that this engaged. If you've seen my forearm, this locks in the support tendons and muscles that stabilize the wrist. Very important, because you don't do this, your wrist is not supported. That's why a lot of people wrap their wrist. They have to because they don't learn how to make a proper fist. And if you see Never Back Down three, I kind of go into that a little bit. Why do you wrap your hands in boxing, in an MMA? So you don't sprain your wrist or break your hands. Exactly. That's because you don't know how to punch. You don't know how to punch without hurting yourself, not your opponent, hurting your damn self. New flash, guys. In martial arts, your hands, your feet, your elbows, your knees, even your head were used as weapons, and we're trained as such. Understand striking is about perfecting the technique, maximum result, minimal effort.
I'll go back to this. But now, it went from here, locking that wrist, locking in the support of mechanisms to secure your whip wrist, to the pressure here. So the pressure here, my pressure here, locks in my wrist. Well, we've changed that to the pressure, which does the same thing. Without that pressure, you're not stabilized. So that's rule number one. Okay.
Rule two. Okay. As I mentioned, the arrow. Okay. You want this to be straight. Okay. Your bone. You should have any punch should have your elbow and your two knuckles. These two knuckles traveling in the same route. Okay. Like if you think about punching in a pool, if I drag my elbow this way, starting to do this thing again, it's gonna drag. Right. My elbow and two knuckles should be following the same pattern. It's been in a hook, still the same pattern. As I said, that arrow. Uppercuts, same pattern, same pattern. It's going here, it's coming up, but it's on dissection. It's traveling the same.
A lot of people may not know that I was a former track athlete. I did decathlon, ten events, and one event I did was called the shotput. Many people presently, you've seen it, where you are hurling this heavy ball at its farthest distance that you can. Well, I went to college based on this. It's one of the first things that, you know, I was known for. And so I started to apply my knowledge and the technique and the physics behind the shotput to my punching power. There was these things called impact challenges in national karate tournaments, right? Where there was an apparatus, the bag that you hit, and it registered how hard you hit it. So you would pay your, your entrance fee, and you register, you know, you can register how many times you want to try to get the highest punch that you can muster. We have pounds per square inch. Well, the first competition that I ended up winning it, and so the winner keeps the bag, so I took it home. And, you know, I started becoming obsessed with breaking my own record. And so I brought it to class and, you know, and then I would do all of these different experiments with proper technique.
Now, sometimes I gotta explain, the most maximum effort doesn't mean it has the most maximum effect. Okay? What you want is maximum effect, least effort. So utilize your body properly for the proper technique. When we see any high-level athlete, it looks like they're, they're effortless. You know, it's slam dunk, and, you know, everything. A great golf swing, great bat swings, looks effortless. That's because the mechanics are there. A lot of times when people hit a bag, they're doing all of this, and you're feeling like you're making the effort, but many times that effort is dissipated. Think about an egg being thrown onto this bag. It will just splat. The energy moves this way. I may smack a bag like this, makes a lot of noise, but that energy is just spread on the epidermis of the bag. What we want is penetration. Okay? We want to penetrate into our target. A lot of times that doesn't look very impressive or make a lot of noise. Just like a boxer throws that short, that short punch. Yes, that's the right by the body. That's derived by proper mechanics, and that's what I'm trying to teach. Okay?
So one of the things I did, like when I would win the, the impact challenge, after the first one, I took it home and I kept breaking my home record. And so every other impact challenge that I entered, I won them all. I had to agree to come late or register my, my, my strikes late. So everybody gets to spend their money, and I could, you know, register one punch and one kick and then take the thing home. So that, that taught me a great deal. And that's one of those things that when I, when I brought it, I would bring the bag to class, and women with really good technique were hitting better than bodybuilders who threw all this effort there that just dissipated. All right. So this is another reason to instruct you on how to punch correctly and strengthen your supportive muscles and your joints, everything, so you can deal with the force that your body is bringing, right? So that's, that's very important because you can hurt yourself if you don't know how to do that.
Now, if you need to wrap your hands, do so. If you see Never Back Down three, there's a, there's a little part where I talk about wrapping your hands because a lot of people don't learn how to punch correctly. I've never had to wrap my hands one day, and I've never had a risk of any kind of, you know, hand injury in striking. And I've, I've been striking for all my life. So again, those, those things that I've talked about, learning the proper fist, learning how to get your, your forearm to secure the rest of your punch, is very important. Take your time. Anything full blast at first. We strike again, like the arrow. We want our punch, our elbow, and our two knuckles to travel in the same path. Okay? Our strikes should be at the end of our rotation. All right.
A lot of people will strike like this. All right. So this is not that. Utilizing my hip and the ground, I wanted in my strike. By crack this slowly here, see my elbow and my fist going the same direction. Now, this major difference. I want to bring my elbow not here, but here. Lock it into my body. There is something that you might have seen a lot of my martial arts out there. You've seen Bruce Lee do this. You see him doing that. This is a very important aspect to traditional martial arts. Sorry, I can go too. Well, start from white crane way back then. But locking this, my arm, my whole arm is starting from here to here, not from here. This could be resisted. This is not nearly as strong as that. Now my body's locked into this, very much like a crane. Not this kind of crane, but a crane that lifts high, heavy objects. There is a counterbalance. Okay? There is a counterbalance that roots that crane into the ground. Not here. If a crane had to lift something heavy here, it'd come right. It has to be here. Right. Have somebody resist your arm. This is a go-to practice where you lock in here. So now my punch starts here to here, not just here. All right. That's another little tidbit. You see Bruce Lee doing that, that's what that's about.
So I want to turn, and my blow is at the end of my turn. Whoa. These mechanics, everything should have a half turn. All right. Another reason not to start, stop here, because I'm open here. I'm open. Okay? I punch like this, I'm open. You can see where you can hit. I'm here, you barely can. My jaw is protected by my shoulder, and I've utilized turning of my hip. That's the power. That's where the power comes from. Look at any baseball player. What's that? That's where the power is coming from. The hip rotation. Golf, the hip rotation. Punching, the hip rotation. Just like the shotput. If I flared my arm out like this, my shotput is landing about two feet short of my best. All right. So that's one aspect.
Now, here's another. Is it a simple and very low-budget way to practice proper technique? This is just a hanger. All right. I just made a loop because what I want you to do is know how to punch straight. Your arm through straight and coming straight back. That technique is very important. That each travel straight because what happens when we do things fast, our elbows will flare out, then making this impossible to go straight. I'd have to then do this. Okay? But with my weapon straight, like an arrow, I should punch straight. That arrow goes in and up. This.