How do Russians hit so hard?

[Beercules]

Chernobyl doe

[BlackSnakeMamba]

[PainfromUkraine]

Chernobyl doe

That's in Ukraine...

[Box-Office]

Being heavy handed is something you are born with. You can improve it by perhaps perfecting your technique that is if it's flawed, but remember if power punching was something attainable, Bradley or Malignaggi would be doing something about it.

[Coach Foulds]

Hard to say without knowing how they individually train - and taking away the genetic and chemical enhancement debates, anyone can improve punching power.

First point would be to get stronger. Strength is foundation of everything. If you are weak, you cant hit hard, jump high, run fast etc

Bigger focus required on hips (glutes) - hips are the link between the lower and upper body. Boxers should push through their feet, power is transferred through the hips and is expressed through the hand

Intermediate muscle fibers can be altered by up to 30% (Simoneau & Bouchard, 1995) though the Copenhagen Muscle Research Institute found 25% Maximum

But back to the OP, I would say its mainly to do with strength.

[AlexKid]

That's easy. Superior technique for generating power.

[AlexKid]

Hard to say without knowing how they individually train - and taking away the genetic and chemical enhancement debates, anyone can improve punching power.

First point would be to get stronger. Strength is foundation of everything. If you are weak, you cant hit hard, jump high, run fast etc

Bigger focus required on hips (glutes) - hips are the link between the lower and upper body. Boxers should push through their feet, power is transferred through the hips and is expressed through the hand

Intermediate muscle fibers can be altered by up to 30% (Simoneau & Bouchard, 1995) though the Copenhagen Muscle Research Institute found 25% Maximum

But back to the OP, I would say its mainly to do with strength.

You really think American/Western athletes don't put an emphasis on strength and weight training? Lol!

Alot of what you suggest will have a limited positive effect, you should try it yourself so you can see that I am right and you are wrong.

Strength training explosive work etc can have a positive effect on power, and even endurance (strength base) if following a periodization plan, but most people do it incorrectly and end up hurting their performance especially their cardio.

Also if you do both explosive/strength work and endurance work together, alot of the intermediate muscle fibres get turned into slow twitch, the body prioritises endurance over explosiveness/strength when both types of exercise are done regularly, that's why you should never try to build a puncher out of a guy that's largely intermediate twitch, hes better off as a high work rate fighter.

So again you are giving out poor advice to alot of people.

[NVSemin]

I've noticed that russian boxers on the whole seem to hit harder than everyone else. Is this because of their tough regime coupled with good technique?

Because No Gays allowed in Russia

[Suckmedry]

We had a coach who had fled russia for political reasons. He was schooled in the soviet system and said he'd had around 150 fights. Think he said he was soviet military WW champ at one point too. said politics stopped him making olympics. Of course he could have been BSing but the dude knew his boxing inside out and he seemed legit so we believed him. He just walked into our gym one day and said "i am boxing coach in russia i want to be boxing coach here too"

One of his biggest emphasis was on power and transferring your weight, and also delivering that final "snap" on the punch. He was fanatical about punching technique and would make you repeat punches x1000 more than any other coach.

His reasoning was that a puncher is always in the fight, so being able to deliver a KO punch was essential.

He seemed to favour two styles. If were suited to punch, he tried to emphasise controlled aggression and deliberate punches think of kostya tszyu or golovkin.

If you were suited to box, he emphasised elusive defence that left both hands free to counter. A snappy turned over jab too. He taught me several very useful counters, especially off the jab or a hook.

I see elements of his style in many ex-ussr nation fighters. Particuarly tszyu, golovkin and lomachenko. the way they bring the rear foot forwards, and their technique. golovkin would have been textbook perfect to him.

He was a great coach, though it was admittedly very boring training under him at times, and the language barrier hindered it. I can only imagine what he could have taught us could he speak fluent english. His english was terrible, he had to carry around a english-russian dictionary around and would always reference it

good bloke though, a very hard man who i respected. he ended up being deported for coming to australia illegally.

Anyway the point of my long post is that they seem to really train picture perfect technique over there, and highly value the KO punch when delivered with timing and preparation.

[Suckmedry]

It's the style. Less emphasis on upper body movement and elusive dancing, more emphasis on calculated distance control and always being ready to transfer power.

It's easy for untrained eyes to call the heavyweights "big stiff idiots" for using this style, harder now that we've seen Kovalev outbox master slickster Hopkins using a fairly standard upright Russian style

You could argue Russians also have unusually large upper body muscle mass (which is correct, along with most northern & eastern Euros) but I doubt that's much of a factor in boxing, where "power" is more about clever timing than actual raw strength.

Of course there are exceptions like Dmitry Pirog who don't really fight Russian style OR have much upper body mass but still have (had) KO power, but there will always be exceptions.

Now see this dude i trained under, his style was ANYTHING but "upright". He liked plenty of spring in the legs, quick shifting movements, and big flashy counter shots, his reasoning being a counter is always more likely to deliver a KO because the opponents committing as well.

He disliked the Klitschkos style, and fcking LOVED Roy Jones. Jones' style was a perfect blend of attack, defence, speed and power in his opinion. He did love Tszyu though.