Why core strength and small muscles affect punching power; A Theory

[Fearless]

If anyone reads up on Ross Enamait's stuff, he advocates CORE training, not just ab training. Have to train the entire core, front and back, side to side. So just crunches and situps itself isn't going to get the best out of a fighter.

[EzzardFan]

1. Considering that it is that original acceleration that leads to a potential deceleration on an opponents noggin, it would be ideal for all the muscle fibers to contract at the same time to generate the most amount of force quickly, and high frequency and high volume exercises train the muscles to do that, engaging as many muscle fibers as quickly as possible at one time, to create momentum, yes

I'm not sure about this. I know that when I throw my rear cross, that the move starts at my waist, then a split second later engages my hips, then a split second later my rear leg makes a sweeping quarter turn, then as my feet square out my shoulder engages whipping the cross over, in and then through with my hips continuing to twist, and then finally the fist snaps over and the hand clenches for impact. If everything contracted at once then I imagine the result would appear more like I had grasped a live cable rather than a smooth coordinated punch.

I think the secret is that the muscles need to operate in harmony with each other, but that yes for each individual muscle you want a maximal contraction at just the right moment in the firing sequence.

A good quality muscle should always be soft like pizza dough when relaxed, and hard like iron when tensed. It should never looked pumped unless you have pumped it.

There are four ways to improve a muscles performance, you can increase it's size, you can increase the blood flow to it for extra endurance, you can strengthen it (making it more dense), and you can increase the strength of the firing impulses acting on it, the neurones.

Any isotonic type exercise will increase muscle size. I favour calisthenics because they encourage coordination and awareness of what the whole body is doing. They also benefit the cardio.

High reps increase blood flow.

Isometrics or, my preference, doing a single very very slow rep builds strength (including core strength of all the muscle groups surrounding it). Try doing a single pushup but taking 60 secs apex to apex and see how many different muscles become engaged.

Kinetic tension exercises also know as dynamic tension, dynamic self resistance, and DVR (deep visualised resistance) work on the neurones, providing better firing and greater muscle coordination and control.

2. As a more simplified version of my original post, would I be incorrect to say that the muscles will inhibit themselves if the potential of injury is apparent, and that if there is a muscular imbalance within the body along the kinetic chain of a punch, that the end result could potentially be much weaker strike due to a "seemingly" insignificant muscle refusing to contract in the correct manner?

Yes I completely agree that muscular imbalances results in injury and impaired performance.

Great post EzzardFan!!!

The only thing I disagree with is ...



If you are wanting to develop explosive power you need to fresh. When fatigued, your ability to recruit fast twitch muscles at a high rate of force development is reduced. With this in mind, to develop explosive power you are better off stopping well before failure. For example, if you can do 20 clap press ups, you would be best off doing 5 reps (approx) and focussing on exploding from the ground with as much force and as fast as possible. The taking a relatively long rest period before repeating (i.e. to allow your CNS to recover).

Do you agree / disagree?

It's not so much whether I agree or disagree. The test is to try training several different way for a period of a few weeks and determine for yourself what works best.

I do fully agree with you on rest periods between sets though.

Everything related to boxing is a compromise. Train as you intend to fight. At the end of 10, 12, or 15 rounds you'll be running on fatigued muscles so perhaps it's worth adapting to operate in that state.

I believe that there are big gains to be made by training to failure... but only if you work within the body's natural anabolic/catabolic cycle. The rewards from training to failure are huge but it also takes it's toll and it's important to cease training for 1 week when the body enters it's catabolic state. This is characterised by an elevated pulse on waking, not being able to get out of bed, and a feeling of extreme fatigue that quickly wears off. Continuing to train results in susceptibility to colds, and injuries. At 39 years old my cycle is 4 weeks training then 1 weeks rest.

[EzzardFan]

Harking back to my original contribution on momentum... If two people punch with the same momentum, say 1,000ftlbs/sec that doesn't mean that their punches are equal. One may be punching 100lbs of weight at 10ft/sec. The other may be punching 50lbs of weight at 20 ft/sec. Both would result in the same force being felt by the opponent, but the latters punch would be faster and theoretically have less chance of being avoided or intercepted. At least it would on the blackboard...

...but there are ways to offset the speed advantage, and many old, cagey, and experienced boxers have applied these over the years: timing, anticipation, non-telegraphic punching, deception... ring craft beats athletic ability every time.

[Spartacus Sully]

the punch would have to be timed as acceleration is per sec per sec so if the punch too .25 seconds the feet per second would have to multiplied by 4 to be per sec per sec so as well everything needs to be converted in to the proper measurements to create newtons so i just paste the things into google and it does it.

(80 **feet per sec) per sec)) * 50 pound =

so 553.019818 newtons to pound force

553.019818 newton to pound force

124.323801 pounds of force

assuming the guy throwing the 100 lbs of force takes the same amount of time getting from point a to point b .25 sec then yes he would have the same pounds of force

[Stevie_WONDER..]

EzzardFan is god