Imploding instead of exploding?

I'll read the article later but he is basically talking about sitting on your punches and being more solid on impact. It may be a little bit counter intuitive, but he is right.
 
I believe he's talking about compacting your technique so that you have better rotational motion.


when we keep our limbs closer to our body, it's much easier to generate rotational momentum. I believe that's the point he was trying to make. By "imploding" you're essentially closing in your technique and bringing your limbs closer to your axis which ends up decreasing your moment of inertia to generate more velocity.


It's like how he described a spinning person
angmom.gif


Although, I do believe you don't necessarily need to compact the upper body to drop downwards for the sake of rotational motion. Your head already resides at the center of the pivot point and won't really affect your moment of inertia. The main thing that keeps you from generating more momentum is your arm's length from the pivot point. See this example where this break dancer only "implodes" the legs towards the core, but his body expand longer, which doesn't affect the speed.
head-spin-gif.gif


If anything at all, it's a stylistic preference if you want to drop your weight on the punch or push upwards. People will have different opinions. I can see how people would like bursting upwards like a Mike Tyson style punch. When you do that, you're generating an additional force vector in the vertical direction. It's going to add to your kinetic chain of various moving parts, which will increase the force. So it's a matter of if you rather generate momentum from the free fall of gravity by sitting on your punches, or by generating momentum by explosive vertical movement. There's not too much we can do to control how explosive we sit on our punches compared to pushing upwards with our lower body muscle fibers. Although sitting on your punches will provide better balance and is more energy efficient.

You you want a more quantified explanation, here you go
To quantify that concept, think of this
physicsbook_rotation_graphik_12.png

'm' is your mass and think of your arm as "r' denoted in the illustration. The reason why we don't wind up our punches far out from the body is because it increases our moment of inertia. In order to generate greater velocity, you want to decrease your moment of inertia.

Take a look at this:

L = mr * v

Keep in mind that angular momentum is a produce of (moment of inertia) x (velocity)

L = angular momentum ( "the angular momentum of a system remains constant unless acted on by an external torque")
m = mass (which doesn't change when we throw a punch, so it remains constant)
r = the length of the arm from the pivot point
v = velocity

In our technique, the only real thing we can control is 'r' and 'v'. We can make 'r' long or short depending on how far our arm is when we punch. The closer our arms are, the smaller our 'r' will be. So if the length of your arm decreases, the velocity will inversely increase.

L = m r * V
Since L (angular momentum is constant), 'r' decreases, as a result, velocity increases.
 
My 2c:
That's why good boxing coaches will tell you to be "tight" with your punches. Hooks should be close to the body, elbows below shoulder height, bent. Otherwise it's just a haymaker. Good Karate will stress good balance over reach. Back straight, stance low, elbows close. The mechanics concept is the same as in boxing, even if it looks different.
 
What a bunch of bullshit.

It's not bullshit. Expertboxing has ridiculously complicated explanations, and I disagree with some of his points, but he's right on this one.

It's simply about dropping your weight when you punch, so that you can remain stable and balanced for defense or follow-up punches. Also, the tighter you make your punches, the more rotational speed you can generate, like a figure skater drawing his arms inward to increase the spin.

Exploding "outward" or "upward" does generate power for single strikes, but the problem is that at the end of the strike, you become unbalanced and open for counters.

I only understood the difference between the two when I did lots of shadow-boxing.

The problem with hitting the heavy bag is that the heavy bag holds you up. It's harder to tell if you are off-balance at the end of the punch. You can throw your weight forward on every blow and the bag will just bounce you back into position.

On the other hand, combination punching the air forces you to stay balanced, because there's nothing solid at the end of your fist to hold you up. When I did lots of shadow boxing, I found myself unconsciously sinking my weight downwards to try keep my balance during combinations. When I realized i was doing this, that's when a lightbulb came on in my head - "Oh that's what my trainers were talking about when they said to sit down on the punches..."
 
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