In boxing you train movement patterns, this develops muscle memory which includes the timing needed to fire the muscle in the most effective sequence. The key is to be relaxed so when your nervous system fires off the muscle needed it isn't already tensed. If you do this then you are assured an effective kinetic chain. The kinetic chain is just the sequence in which you fire the muscles involved in the movement.
But it pretty complex to break down an actual kinetic chain of something as simple as say a right cross, and then you have to agree on the individual timing of each muscle in the sequence. That's why we just train movement patterns over and over. With time they become more efficient and faster. It's a matter of repetition of the correct movement pattern.
Maybe with some really advanced telemetry or motion capture cameras you could identify a flaw in the timing of one individual muscle group and then somehow workout how to correct it in the athlete in question. I know good coaches can watch slow mo of an athlete and see if he is carrying too much tension in one area of his body that might be inhibiting the overall movement but working out if your pec minor is firing 10 milli secs ahead of when it should on a left hook, currently I don't think that's possible.
There are many ways to the top of the mountain. Samuel asked if it was posible to ditch all the theory and get results anyway. Sure it is, there will be always natural talents who can feel the inertia, the weight, the speed and little by little reach the peaks of perfection - though even them are not coimpleteley isolated, and guys like Ali or Mosley had always open ears and make good use of every bit of theory that came their way, floating in the wind.
Then, at the other end of the spectrum, you have the scientific approach and a whole range in between both.
Scientific fighting is fastidious, slow and not without hipcups, as any other scientific endeavour, yet it also has some merits. The discovery of (your own) human body and its inner works is in itself a rewarding job. The back and forth between theory and physical experience, with its slow embodyment or "incarnation of the fighting principles" is also a great experience that can enrich your view of the world...
Finally, its best quality is that is open to everybody, you dont need to be talented to follow the steps of science, you dont need to be gifted or very smart to learn the basic procedures of maths, geometry, etc... I can guarentee - with a, say, 98% of succes - the clunkiest 30 year old with no athleticism and previous martial training that in three years, with 1 hour class plus 1 hour at home, should be able to posses three basic tools: a snaping jab, a powerful straight and some decent, even if not too fast depending on his natural athleticism, balanced footwork; and that regardless of the traineer cuz science works.
You are right thou, that until every gym has ultra slow motion cameras, is hard for the instructor to really monitor the kinetic chain, though a trained eye can see further than what we think. Thats why the process has to be build up, developed and tested by the trainee himself with the instructor only offering help in the learning process not in the materials themselves, you want the trainee to "create" his own tools, to wake his aqwereness and, specially to make sure that in the begining his selfconsciouness is a objetive as posible... nothing more, nothing less.
I dont have the time to go deeper into the whole process but basically you learn from carefully designed "stances" to develope a general sense of relaxation, in other words, you want to reach a - lets call it - "relaxation ground zero", that is the minimal tension required for a human body to stay upright against gravity (though that is not as easy as it sounds and will take from 3 months to a year or more instead of the "two afternoons" our dear Pivot Punch is ready to offer
) Then, with that "zero state" as a limit, point of reference and background you start to isolate the muscles in the kinetic chain, then you start to "knot" them into groups, then you slowly build up the chain and little by little you shortdown the neuromuscular "firing up" times and overlappins until you reach the explosive yet controlled kinetic chaing of a trained fighter.
In the course of these long and slow excercises, of course, your self awereness (of tension, relaxation exchanges, of inertial forces, etc), which naturally talented fighters already have, will rise and grow without limits. So as
a guy often reminds us, this is as much a physical experience as an intellectual one.
