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 After yesterdays post on improving your punches, I realised that one article couldn’t do the topic justice. So I decided that I would put together a series of articles covering all of the aspects of building a knockout punch and give exercises in each article to develop the specific aspect of a powerful punch.

 

Today’s article, Part one is on balance. Balance, surprisingly, is one of if not the most important part of building a knockout punch. You would probably think it would be punching power or speed but balance ties everything together and without it, you will never get the maximum power or impact out of your punch.

 

We’re going to work on the jab and the cross. Not so much, the specific dynamics (we’ll cover that later), but just the basics and I’ll cover upper cuts and hooks later.

 

Also, The whole article will be based on Boxing or Kickboxing style punches. I firmly believe that these are the strongest and most practical punching styles, so that’s what I’m going to stick to.

 

 

Ok, so first a basic description of your stance and a jab and a cross. ( I do mean basic, these will be covered at a later date!)

 

Start in your boxing guard, hands up, somewhere in front of your face, protecting your head.

 

Your stance should be something like a step long and half a step wide, the important thing being that you are comfortable and relaxed.

 

Angle your body a bit so that you are not standing square on.

 

Come up onto your toes.

 

Your stance should be comfortable and relaxed and you should feel well balanced. A good way to check your stance is to bounce around on your toes in all directions. If you can move freely then your stance is at least ok!

 

In Boxing, you stand with your weak hand forward. When you extend this hand (the one in front) forward and punch, it is called a Jab and your back hand is called a Cross.

 

 

Ok, on to the exercise.

 

Basically, you are going to practice punching very slowly whilst making sure that you are balanced. By punching like this, very slowly, you will be able to detect exactly where your technique is floored and you loose your balance. By punching repeatedly, you will be able to work out these imperfections and so that your balance through the punch is perfect. This will then translate to your technique when you punch full speed!

 

So, start from your stance, on your toes and make sure that you stay on your toes at all times.

 

Start your jab. Keep your elbow down. Let your foot rotate, Your hips and upper body should come through.

 

In this exercise, you are going to extend your fist out to its absolute maximum range so that you test your balance at the extreme.

 

To do this, you will have to fully rotate into the technique. Experiment with moving your body to gain more range but, your feet do not move forward (your punch is static) you must stay on your toes and you should NEVER lean forward. Your torso should be upright at all times.

 

If you were to lean forward, you would be moving your center of balance out from right between your feet ( where you are most stable). You may be able to remain balanced in this position but you would have to use your strength to do so and so could not be relaxed. This would take power from your punch and would hamper your mobility.

 

 

When you have jabbed to your maximum extension, hold the position for a second and start a cross. Bringing your front hand back to your chin.

 

Your cross should be extended in the same way as your jab.

 

You will inevitably loose your balance, simply correct the mistake the next time and with practice, your technique and balance in your punches will improve dramatically!

 

You can increase the difficulty by holding small hand weights so long as they do not harm your form.

 

Your aim should be to repeatedly jab and cross without having to adjust your feet  and for the punches and the whole movement to be as smooth as possible.

 

Tags: balance, Boxing, Cross, exercises, instruction, Jab, Kickboxing, knockout, Punch, Punching, Technique

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Technique, Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.