As you know, in recent weeks, I’ve been sharing various drills intended to help you understand that the fist (in Japanese, the ken) is only the “tip of the iceberg” in terms of understanding where the power of the punch comes from.  That’s the reason for the drills associated with keeping the foot “rooted” on the ground, leg thrusts, hip rotation, shoulder locks, arm thrusts, etc.  The fist – although crucial to the end-point delivery of the punch, is pretty much limited to being tightly closed and in proper alignment with the wrist and arm and the point of impact.

It’s so much easier to show this to you by demonstrating it, and by having you practice the drills.  To augment this, I was going to write up a short note regarding discussing how the “power of the pen” actually comes from a mind full of ideas that is transmitted to the tip of the pen,  Similarly, I was going to describe how a powerful punch (the power of the ken) actually was the result of a whole chain of energy flowing from a rooted foot and conducted through various muscles/ligaments/tendons into the striking knuckles.  After several paragraphs, I became frustrated…I think that demonstrating a picture-perfect gyaku-zuki is worth a thousand words, haha.

Fortunately, I came across a simple, short article by Scott Laidler (personal trainer) and Darren Richardson (kickboxer), that describes where the source punching power better than I could have.  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/10965938/How-to-improve-your-punch-power.html

Note that it mentions the need to throw one’s weight into the punch.  All of your aging senseis have gotten a bit slower (and lost some strength) during the 5 decades since we first became young men, but there’s some comfort in knowing that each sensei (cept Sensei Trish, haha) has also gained between 50-100 lbs…which means we have greater “throw weight” behind our slower punches.