Exercise For Better Punches

What if I could guarantee an exercise that will improve your punches? Would you be interested in the exercise if I told you that it has never been seen before outside of the classes that I teach? If you’d like to see marked, and I do mean noticeable, improvement in your punches, try this training method….

Build Punch Power and Precision

When I originally designed this exercise in the early 90’s, my goal was to improve punch precision. At first, I was devising the exercise for my own training, but soon decided to share it with a few of my students.

Recently, I started practicing the exercise again. Maybe I’ll share it with my current students.

What’s curious is that I developed the exercise to build precision, but my students all praise its benefits at developing power.

Fascinating.

Forcing Imprecision For More Punch Precision

I had noticed that sometimes tense muscles impeded precision punching. When my muscles were tense, my punches were “off.”

So, my idea was to force them to be relaxed. The best way that I knew to relax muscles was to progressively tense them. (I had used this technique in progressive relaxation techniques.)

I’d tense the muscles of my hand, and then relax them. Next, I’d tense both the hands and the forearms at the same time — and then relax. The third time, I added in my upper arms.

And I held each tensing session for a count of ten. I’d count to ten, then relax for around 30 seconds.

After I had completely tensed my muscles, I’d practice precision punching. I’d punch toward a small target. I’d punch slowly five times, each punch with as much precision as possible.

Then I’d punch once as fast as I could, trying to strike just as accurately.

The tired state after tensing made my muscle action less precise. So, I’d have to correct during the super slow punches. I really had to concentrate, to keep my hits from getting sloppy.

Developing Punch Power

My students appreciated the punch sets for different reasons….

Wouldn’t you know it — one big hindrance to punch power is the tensing of muscles. Almost any time someone strong complains to me that they lack power in their punches, I can almost guarantee it’s because they tense their muscles too much during the path of the punch.

With the above exercise, my students were punching with more relaxed swings. The power of their punches increased by leaps and bounds. It really was amazing to watch.

They tensed progressively. Then they punched slowly with relaxed muscles. Finally, they’d punch at full speed, with relaxed arms and fists, that tensed only the instant before contact.

Keith Pascal is the author of several ebooks on punch improvement. He also edits and writes a weekly ezine all about punching faster and harder: Punch eZine.

Related Dr Bate Eye Exercise Articles