BACK Up Your Punch With This...

A powerful punch requires not a strong chest, not strong shoulders and not neccessarily strong triceps. Instead, a powerful punch will need a really strong back! The back muscles are what really supports and explodes the punch, along with the legs.

Notice the guys that have a powerful punch? The ones that you know have BOOM - they all have very developed lats. It's just the nature of punching. Skinny arms can still have boom as long as the back and leg muscles are really into the strike.

How to develop the back? Well, proper chi-sao will help you. You'll have to find an instructor who can actually help you develop these muscles in the context of chi-sao (i would say, not many instructors do this)..and yes, you'll have to master the pull-up. It's a really amazing exercise.

You can check this post out on my other site on how to do the pullup if you're new to pull-ups.

Try various versions - wide, neutral and close grip pull ups and chin ups.

At the end of the day, don't neglect the back muscles. It's really what drives the punch and allows the rest of your arms to be relatively relaxed for a powerful yet relaxed and heavy strike.

Until then.

Just Like Riding A Bike...

Been on a 3 week hiatus, given work duties, then a trip out of town and then back to an incredibly difficult grind after labour day..

which brought me back to class last Monday and boy did it feel AWESOME! Of course, you can sure feel the skills being a bit rustier than usual, but just as quickly as they left, they come back pretty fast too.

Miss being hit (haha, did I really say that?) and I miss the interaction with my fellow kung fu brothers and of course, with my Si-Fu.

Although I don't really advocate stopping lessons, sometimes a breather is kind of nice. Looking forward to training...

Until then.