You Don’t Know Your Chain Until It’s Gone

Last night in class we worked our punching power through the lens of maximizing the use of the kinetic chain. That’s fancy talk for punching starting with your feet.

Your feet drive the action. It is easiest to feel this from a stationary position but more realistically, it is often manifested through footwork – step forward and throw a punch. From the feet, the force transfers through the hips and then up to the arm.

As with so many things in life, it is easy to take our kinetic chain for granted. We could wait for an injury to appreciate this but instead, last night, we sat down in a chair and punched. Sitting makes it tough to use your feet properly when you punch. Thus, punching from a chair makes you yearn to punch standing up – so we went back to standup punching.

As a final step, we punched from bottom mount position. This position makes it very hard to use your feet and hips to generate power. Again, it makes you miss your kinetic chain, makes you appreciate what you had so that when you stand back up and punch it is nearly magical how hard you can hit.

Don’t wait until your kinetic chain leaves you. Appreciate what you have and punch with your whole body.