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There are many old books written on the topic, Jack Dempsey's being one of the more famous ones (and surprisingly technical) as well as other books such as Boxing: A Guide To Modern Methods" 1931 KNEBWORTH - viscount others by notable boxers like Jim Corbett, Louis and Marciano. The best information however has to be picked up in snippets from great trainers like Jack Blackburn (who in my humble opinion is the greatest trainer of all time at least by contemporary standards) Freddy Browne, Harry Wiley, Ray Arcel and Eddie Futch.
All of these trainers brings his own style to the art of boxing, and you can notice it around the board on certain fighters. Blackburn's mechanics and ideas are pretty much Joe Louis in a nutshell. and Joe Louis' "stand and listen" personality works quite well with Blackburn's teaching. Blackburn practically morphed Joe Louis into the perfect fighter, physically and mentally. Freddy Browne is well known for his baiting head-movement and inside fighting skills seen both in Duran and Marciano (he doubled as a cutman, but his ideas clearly rubbed off) Arcel added some outside game to Duran's already robust skillset, his right cross and shifting moves to get into position can also be seen with Benny Leonard.
This post is about punching mechanics. Punching has changed a lot over the years - the punches you see today do not resemble the punches you see of yesteryear. In my personal opinion, The art has actually been lost. Here are a couple detailed points about punching mechanics.
Punching consists of Leverage and weight-transfer first and foremost. The other factors should be applied after. Leverage is sort of related to balance in some ways, but balance geared towards punching. Blackburn would simplify boxing down to 2 things: Balance and timing (we won't be discussing timing in this post)
To understand leverage, extend your arm straight out in front of you and attempt to move a heavy object such as a refrigerator. You'll notice pretty soon that to do so, even if you are a large heavy person - takes tremendous strain to keep your balance let alone move the fridge. This is because this is a poorly leveraged position. When a fighter is referred to as an "arm puncher" it really means he is not properly leveraging his punches. his arms are leaving his body and swinging wildly - there is no leverage behind the punch.
Leverage: Likewise, just like in an arm wrestling competition. The closer your arms are to your body, the more leverage you can generate. By bringing your body in much closer to your hand, your are able to leverage yourself and move the fridge with ease. This alone overcomes all aspects of weight and size. Leverage is king. It should be noted, its the joints that are leveraging, and in regards to punching - it's actually your elbows you must bring in close to your body for optimal leverage.
Balance: After this comes balance. You would be surprised how off balance most people are. This is because every person has their own unique balance. Some have short legs, some long legs, some are thicker up top and slimmer down low or vice versa. Some people are actually stooping over constantly. Good posture starts with hip alignment. The hands and hips should naturally rest at your sides, not dangle out in front. Start by bringing your hips forward, straightening your back should never be a chore. Don't forget your head and neck. This may take a while, but you will find the optimal balance. Some of you may need more bend in your legs, others may not. Try to look at your weight distribution through a foggy lens as a sort of heat map as to how you might be proportioned. Some may need wider or narrower stances based on how wide your hips are or how long your legs might be.
Weight transfer: The next is weight transfer. It has to be very subtle. Less is more. The transfer from the back foot to the front foot - but ever so subtle that balance is not compromised. if you hold your arm straight out - as Dempsey would say - practice transferring your weight. you will notice this alone generates a lot of power and/or force without needing to move your arms at all. the same goes for hooks. Practice finding optimal weight transfer. where the weight starts and where it should end. LESS IS MORE. Some of this may need video for a proper description, but those with at least some rudimentary knowledge can fill in the blanks. This is after all, just a theory post. This goes hand in hand with balance and everyone will have their own unique transfer of weight in accordance to their build.
Those are the fundamental building blocks of punching power. Next up are a few technical things in regards to the human body. Muscles.
Muscles can contract and detract. That's all they really do and they work together to perform tasks. The kinetic chain is basically a chain reaction of contractions and detractions trained by your mind through repetition. This kinetic chain of events must encompass balance, weight transfer and of course the punch trajectory itself. In order for your muscles to fire in perfect timing over and over - they NEED to be limber. This is why weight lifting, especially heavy stuff is actually terrible for boxing. A dancers body is what you need. A dancers body is what Ray Robinson had. The muscle detracting is just as important as its contracting. If you look at Ray Leonard, or even Duran - they are extremely limber - their arms and bodies move like liquid. You must develop this type of body through extensive stretching and staying far away from anything that hinders this. Certain exercises like shadow boxing underwater and hitting a double end bag or speedbag can help with this.
Perpetual movement. This is the idea that one movement can start another movement easier than starting a movement from a standstill. Knowing how muscles work, standing completely still will require muscles to contract and detract all the same - you just don't see it under your skin. All movements should start with another movement - creating a small momentum. Most punches start with the jab. The simplest punch to throw with the least complexity in regards to body movement. This is also why Rhythm is very important. it keeps those muscles warm and ready to perform their tasks. It keeps them limber and warmed up. This is NOT the same as telegraphing. Your rhythm can be as broken and non uniform as you want it to be. Telegraphing is anything that is telling your opponent what you are going to do, and often requires it to be habitual.
Punch type: The type of punch required to hurt a human being must be abrupt and also stiff on connection. Punching a soft target such as a speedbag or a piece of paper will train you to hit properly. A heavy-bag is more so to develop your punching muscles and hands. The human body is soft and vulnerable inside and somewhat armored on the outside. And it's only armored if the punch is seen coming and braced for. If it lands unseen the target is actually soft and super vulnerable. A slow strong push will not hurt a human being, but it may leave a massive dent in your car door. This is why those punch test machines are very useless.
Follow through: understanding how muscles work, the final resting position of the punch should not be on the surface level of the target, no it should be thrown as if the target is not even there. right through.
Anchoring yourself: Force is invisible. Do not let your punches bounce off the target. Drive your fists through and hold contact for a split second. Allow all the force to reverberate through the victim and not back through yourself. Anchor your feet (sit down) for a second on contact. You can see this as Duran hits the punching bag. Or Marciano. I learned this first hand breaking pipes at work. If the bat bounces the pipe won't break. But stop the bat from bouncing and all that force will snap the pipe. If you want to break someone's ribs do likewise. Instantly bringing your hands back to your face is a sure way to never become a good puncher. This is what amateur's do. Your defense must not be based around blocking everything. your hands are for punching, there are other smarter ways to defend yourself. Sometimes a good offense is also defense in itself.
endnotes: With all this being said, these are ideas that can be added to someone's punching skillset. It may not teach someone to punch from scratch.
It is easy to see that the ideal build to achieve this would be a limber, trim body type. with great weight distribution. Joe Louis comes to mind. You do not want extra bulk on your frame. It doesn't matter if fighters today have this, they also don't know how to punch properly and should not be viewed as ideal punchers. There are a few other factors of course, such as velocity, perhaps wrist and joint strength, weight and intangibles that we can't / will never see. I have a few more points I would like to make in regards to the rotator cuff and the natural spring loading of punches to create a snapping motion - but it may be too difficult to convert to words.
All of these trainers brings his own style to the art of boxing, and you can notice it around the board on certain fighters. Blackburn's mechanics and ideas are pretty much Joe Louis in a nutshell. and Joe Louis' "stand and listen" personality works quite well with Blackburn's teaching. Blackburn practically morphed Joe Louis into the perfect fighter, physically and mentally. Freddy Browne is well known for his baiting head-movement and inside fighting skills seen both in Duran and Marciano (he doubled as a cutman, but his ideas clearly rubbed off) Arcel added some outside game to Duran's already robust skillset, his right cross and shifting moves to get into position can also be seen with Benny Leonard.
This post is about punching mechanics. Punching has changed a lot over the years - the punches you see today do not resemble the punches you see of yesteryear. In my personal opinion, The art has actually been lost. Here are a couple detailed points about punching mechanics.
Punching consists of Leverage and weight-transfer first and foremost. The other factors should be applied after. Leverage is sort of related to balance in some ways, but balance geared towards punching. Blackburn would simplify boxing down to 2 things: Balance and timing (we won't be discussing timing in this post)
To understand leverage, extend your arm straight out in front of you and attempt to move a heavy object such as a refrigerator. You'll notice pretty soon that to do so, even if you are a large heavy person - takes tremendous strain to keep your balance let alone move the fridge. This is because this is a poorly leveraged position. When a fighter is referred to as an "arm puncher" it really means he is not properly leveraging his punches. his arms are leaving his body and swinging wildly - there is no leverage behind the punch.
Leverage: Likewise, just like in an arm wrestling competition. The closer your arms are to your body, the more leverage you can generate. By bringing your body in much closer to your hand, your are able to leverage yourself and move the fridge with ease. This alone overcomes all aspects of weight and size. Leverage is king. It should be noted, its the joints that are leveraging, and in regards to punching - it's actually your elbows you must bring in close to your body for optimal leverage.
Balance: After this comes balance. You would be surprised how off balance most people are. This is because every person has their own unique balance. Some have short legs, some long legs, some are thicker up top and slimmer down low or vice versa. Some people are actually stooping over constantly. Good posture starts with hip alignment. The hands and hips should naturally rest at your sides, not dangle out in front. Start by bringing your hips forward, straightening your back should never be a chore. Don't forget your head and neck. This may take a while, but you will find the optimal balance. Some of you may need more bend in your legs, others may not. Try to look at your weight distribution through a foggy lens as a sort of heat map as to how you might be proportioned. Some may need wider or narrower stances based on how wide your hips are or how long your legs might be.
Weight transfer: The next is weight transfer. It has to be very subtle. Less is more. The transfer from the back foot to the front foot - but ever so subtle that balance is not compromised. if you hold your arm straight out - as Dempsey would say - practice transferring your weight. you will notice this alone generates a lot of power and/or force without needing to move your arms at all. the same goes for hooks. Practice finding optimal weight transfer. where the weight starts and where it should end. LESS IS MORE. Some of this may need video for a proper description, but those with at least some rudimentary knowledge can fill in the blanks. This is after all, just a theory post. This goes hand in hand with balance and everyone will have their own unique transfer of weight in accordance to their build.
Those are the fundamental building blocks of punching power. Next up are a few technical things in regards to the human body. Muscles.
Muscles can contract and detract. That's all they really do and they work together to perform tasks. The kinetic chain is basically a chain reaction of contractions and detractions trained by your mind through repetition. This kinetic chain of events must encompass balance, weight transfer and of course the punch trajectory itself. In order for your muscles to fire in perfect timing over and over - they NEED to be limber. This is why weight lifting, especially heavy stuff is actually terrible for boxing. A dancers body is what you need. A dancers body is what Ray Robinson had. The muscle detracting is just as important as its contracting. If you look at Ray Leonard, or even Duran - they are extremely limber - their arms and bodies move like liquid. You must develop this type of body through extensive stretching and staying far away from anything that hinders this. Certain exercises like shadow boxing underwater and hitting a double end bag or speedbag can help with this.
Perpetual movement. This is the idea that one movement can start another movement easier than starting a movement from a standstill. Knowing how muscles work, standing completely still will require muscles to contract and detract all the same - you just don't see it under your skin. All movements should start with another movement - creating a small momentum. Most punches start with the jab. The simplest punch to throw with the least complexity in regards to body movement. This is also why Rhythm is very important. it keeps those muscles warm and ready to perform their tasks. It keeps them limber and warmed up. This is NOT the same as telegraphing. Your rhythm can be as broken and non uniform as you want it to be. Telegraphing is anything that is telling your opponent what you are going to do, and often requires it to be habitual.
Punch type: The type of punch required to hurt a human being must be abrupt and also stiff on connection. Punching a soft target such as a speedbag or a piece of paper will train you to hit properly. A heavy-bag is more so to develop your punching muscles and hands. The human body is soft and vulnerable inside and somewhat armored on the outside. And it's only armored if the punch is seen coming and braced for. If it lands unseen the target is actually soft and super vulnerable. A slow strong push will not hurt a human being, but it may leave a massive dent in your car door. This is why those punch test machines are very useless.
Follow through: understanding how muscles work, the final resting position of the punch should not be on the surface level of the target, no it should be thrown as if the target is not even there. right through.
Anchoring yourself: Force is invisible. Do not let your punches bounce off the target. Drive your fists through and hold contact for a split second. Allow all the force to reverberate through the victim and not back through yourself. Anchor your feet (sit down) for a second on contact. You can see this as Duran hits the punching bag. Or Marciano. I learned this first hand breaking pipes at work. If the bat bounces the pipe won't break. But stop the bat from bouncing and all that force will snap the pipe. If you want to break someone's ribs do likewise. Instantly bringing your hands back to your face is a sure way to never become a good puncher. This is what amateur's do. Your defense must not be based around blocking everything. your hands are for punching, there are other smarter ways to defend yourself. Sometimes a good offense is also defense in itself.
endnotes: With all this being said, these are ideas that can be added to someone's punching skillset. It may not teach someone to punch from scratch.
It is easy to see that the ideal build to achieve this would be a limber, trim body type. with great weight distribution. Joe Louis comes to mind. You do not want extra bulk on your frame. It doesn't matter if fighters today have this, they also don't know how to punch properly and should not be viewed as ideal punchers. There are a few other factors of course, such as velocity, perhaps wrist and joint strength, weight and intangibles that we can't / will never see. I have a few more points I would like to make in regards to the rotator cuff and the natural spring loading of punches to create a snapping motion - but it may be too difficult to convert to words.
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