Punching Power

I came across a friendly discussion with a friend of mine regarding speed and power.  He felt, speed = power.  Faster you are, the more powerful the punch. I'm sure we all know that this isn't entirely accurate.   The common understanding is that force = mass x acceleration or power = energy per sec. In both formulas, speed or timing are factors. Decrease the time, increase the power. OR increase the energy, increase the power. 

It seems in our wing tsnu training, we strive to increase our speed. This is a way to substitute for our lack of mass, per se, yet still generate a killer punch. We work on it day in and day out to relax our punches, stretch our muscles and tendons/ligaments to achieve the time of relaxation needed for a powerful punch.

So, once you can generate that kind of power, can your body handle it? Can you fist handle the physical impact, especially at the new found force?  Maybe you get that one good shot to the chin, only to shatter your fist exactly at the same time, simply because the force was too great? 

At the same time, force is going to be distributed rather unevenly. The contours of the human face/body is not flat and so the power generated would be diffused inefficiently, let alone hold the potential for damaging your fist, wrist, fingers, etc depending how your attack lands. 

So how do you ensure that your limbs can handle the crushing impact of the force you generated? Devote hours to conditioning? Hope for the best? Utilize the fist for soft targets, and the palm for harder targets?

Will continue...

Until then.