19/06/2020
Elements of Punching
Punching is fundamental to Karate. Doing it correctly, however, does not come naturally. Proper training is required. Unfortunately, proper training for punches is rare.
Punching is a whole-body technique, starting with toes gripping the floor and finishing with a relaxed ring and pinky finger while contracting the forefinger, middle finger, and thumb. The elbow should not point to the side, but instead should be rotated to the floor, closing the armpit. The radius bone in the forearm should be aligned directly behind the first two knuckles of the fist, which make contact with the target. The wrist should be straight. Muscles in the arm and shoulder should be mostly relaxed, while the latissimus dorsi muscles are engaged. The punch should start with a double twist hip rotation to begin the gross movement. The second part of that double rotation should trigger a tightening of the core muscles of the abdomen about two inches below the navel, which the Japanese call the tanden 丹田. Breath should be exhaled naturally until the last contraction when it shifts to a feeling of “drinking your breath,” as my teacher says. There should be a left and right balance to the tension in the muscles in the back. In the most basic form, students learn this by contracting the pulling hand or hiki te.
Several influential bloggers have written that the hiki te does nothing to add power to the punch. In one case, a writer with an engineering background mathematically demonstrated that the pulling hand does not add power based on mass and a pulling action through a kind of lever or seesawing motion around the center of the body. I agree with that assessment, but it does not address the benefits that come from the muscular stability that comes on what would otherwise be a passive side of the body in a punch. By pulling the hand back, the timing of the contraction is in sync with the arrival of the punching hand.
Indeed, there are other ways of creating that stability, but for a beginner, the exercise of pulling one hand back while the other goes out is beneficial for learning the fundamental timing and necessary contraction. Once students learn the method, they can allow their hand to go a more useful position or employ it for a different purpose, such as pulling the opponent in a way that creates an opening, or a more effective strike.
Training with makiwara 巻藁 helps people punch better. However, many people misunderstand the purpose of the makiwara and therefore use it wrong. The makiwara should teach how to cascade the contraction of muscles to create a penetrating, well-connected punch.
A good makiwara is thicker at the bottom and tapers toward the top. The Okinawans chose the shape and species of wood to create a mix between rigidity and elasticity. When shaped correctly, and when the wood is not too dry, the board will be rigid against a slow pushing motion, but springy to a sudden strike force. This attribute helps us learn to punch with explosiveness.
Haphazardly hitting the makiwara does not work. Connecting the hit with sinking into the tanden does. When I was younger and first visited Okinawa, I did not speak any Japanese. I recall working the makiwara in a dojo in Agena and getting some feedback that I was doing it wrong. With the lack of communication, I did not understand what I was doing wrong. I thought that it was all about effort and enthusiasm so I hit with great effort, enthusiastically wrong.
I thought that the purpose of the device was to harden my knuckles. That is a side effect, and a welcome one, but not the intention. So with the wrong idea in my head, I had the wrong goal, and I did it wrongly.
Years later, with more experience under my belt, I saw Nakamura Sensei hitting his makiwara at the Embukan Dojo off of Kokusai Dori. When he hit it, the whole wall would shake. When I hit it, I could move it, but I had nowhere near the same effect. I was probably 30% bigger than he was and was 1/3 his age at the time.
As my Japanese improved, I could discuss training methods for the makiwara, implementation of tanden, and learned from Akamine Sensei much of his thoughts on using it and about striking in general. Applying some of what I can remember from physics, I know there are some aspects of elasticity in objects, and it is that property, with the given shape and material of the makiwara, that allows for rigidity at one rate of application of force and elasticity at a much faster rate. So, the Okinawans designed the makiwara to reinforce the correct type of punching, while resisting the wrong type. This makiwara’s elastic feedback is much more useful than just hitting solid objects to harden your hands.
Thinking of the punch as a cycle can also help improvement. A punch starts from a relaxed position and stance, darts to the point just before contact where it is anchored with a near-total contraction of the necessary muscles, and then melts back to relaxation. Being tight before a punch impedes speed. Being tight after a blow opens the puncher to having his balance disrupted by a block or counter on the arm. Being tight following a punch also impedes a second or third movement.
Many people believe that they should never fully extend the elbow when punching. They believe this because a fully extended elbow with a sideways orientation is susceptible to techniques such as hiji shime 肘締め in Aikido or Jujutsu. However, if the elbow is pointed to the floor, as I described earlier, then the joint is protected. The person punching should only extend the elbow for the slightest moment while projecting force through the structure provided by the bone alignment. Emphasis on relaxation before and after the punch ensures elbow extension for the minimum time necessary.
Without proper bone alignment during force transference, some fraction of force will be lost. If you recall trigonometry, we can convert any angle into an X and Y element via the sine and cosine functions. We apply the same principle in knowing what load a support beam can give a structure at a certain angle. The same principle applies to any bend in the elbow when hitting. So while it looks like a punch is done with a slight bend in the elbow because it assumes that posture upon relaxation, it is straight at the moment of impact with a straight stacking of the joints and bones.
Anyone who trained with me for any length of time probably heard me break down punching several times, hopefully in several different ways. We typically do 50 chest level punches, and 50 head level punches as part of our kihon or basics sets at the beginning of adult classes. Often, I let students pick out one aspect of punching to concentrate on for ten repetitions as they count. So, for example, one student will talk about relaxing as the hand moves forward, and that is what we try to improve for that set of ten. The next student might focus on breathing naturally instead of in a forced manner. The following might discuss use of hips, or relaxing after the punch, or squeezing the thumb and index and middle finger while leaving the ring finger and pinky relaxed. You get the point.
I ran across an article by Jesse Enkamp, a young writer who has visited our hombu dojo as well as many others in Okinawa. In his article, he discusses chinkuchi and raises the terms ganamaku, and muchimi. He quotes Higaonna Sensei, a 10th Dan in Goju Ryu Karate:
This expression [chinkuchi] is used to describe the tension or stability of the joints in the body for a firm stance, a powerful punch, or a strong block. For example, when punching or blocking, the joints of the body are momentarily locked for an instant and concentration is focused on the point of contact; the stance is made firm by locking the joints of the lower body – the ankles, the knees, and the hips – and by gripping the floor with the feet."
Thus a rapid free-flowing movement is suddenly checked for an instant, on striking or blocking, as power is transferred or absorbed. Then the tension is released immediately to prepare for the next movement.
I want to bring awareness to the point that Higaonna Sensei makes about the momentary locking of the joints. Many Budo-ka disagree with this, and I am always a little dismayed by their thinking. How many of you have been told not to lock out your elbow when punching? I see it all the time in the Midwest.
Unfortunately, many instructors teach people to think about the elbow incorrectly. They leave the elbow joint in a sideways orientation, such that if the arm is bent, the hand will come back toward the chest horizontally, and they leave a bend in the elbow. This approach leaves the end of the punch ill-defined and disrupts the transference of power into the target by redirecting energy into the soft tissue around the elbow. It makes the punch, slower, less powerful, less accurate, and causes the very same damage it is intended to avoid!
By contrast, I teach my students to punch the same way every Shorin Ryu teacher taught me – to extend the skeletal structure for a momentary full extension at the point of percussion. I teach the alignment discussed earlier and taught by Higaona Sensei. This approach protects the elbow from hyperextension attacks from the outside, distributes power along the skeletal frame, defines the end of the punch, provides for precision in the same way that target shooters achieve accuracy, and allows for a smooth release of the tension following the delivery of power through the quick relaxation of the muscles after the point of impact. The punch does not slow down at the end of the movement as it does with a bent elbow. We use the body as intended.
I stress the point about the elbow because I have seen people consistently wrong on this point. I had one friend who was taught not to lock out his elbow when punching, who tried a simple drill with me. At times I practice extinguishing a candle with a single punch with no withdrawal. The idea is that if you can blow out a candle with your punch, you probably have a proper technique. At first, he was skeptical that a person could even do it. After I demonstrated that it could be done, he tried a few strikes. Not only did he fail to extinguish the candle, but he also caused himself some pain in his elbow while trying. As he was a black belt and was losing face in front of his students, he quickly called an end to the drill and resisted ever coming back to it in future sessions.
I have been out of contact with him for some time, but as of the last I knew, he was still teaching the slightly bent elbow approach with the elbow pointing to the side. Some people find it challenging to move from an idea even when presented with evidence of a better method. Often it is because “my teacher showed me to do it that way.” When we talk about advancing through Shu-Ha,-Ri, we discuss the challenges of making something ours while still keeping it pure to the art. Yes, this is a challenge. But cementing yourself into a mentality that does not allow you to do anything but attempt to do everything exactly like “Master” # # will only yield generations of continually fading replications of “Master” # # , which probably explains why there are some dubious standards out there .
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