{"id":2452,"date":"2019-10-20T18:20:41","date_gmt":"2019-10-21T04:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/?p=2452"},"modified":"2019-10-20T18:20:41","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T04:20:41","slug":"the-power-of-the-pen-the-power-of-the-ken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/?p=2452","title":{"rendered":"The Power of the Pen, the Power of the Ken"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As you know, in recent weeks, I&#8217;ve been sharing various drills intended to help you understand that the fist (in Japanese, the ken) is only the &#8220;tip of the iceberg&#8221; in terms of understanding where the power of the punch comes from.\u00c2\u00a0 That&#8217;s the reason for the drills associated with keeping the foot &#8220;rooted&#8221; on the ground, leg thrusts, hip rotation, shoulder locks, arm thrusts, etc.\u00c2\u00a0 The fist &#8211; 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.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s so much easier to show this to you by demonstrating it, and by having you practice the drills.\u00c2\u00a0 To augment this, I was going to write up a short note regarding discussing how the &#8220;power of the pen&#8221; actually comes from a mind full of ideas that is transmitted to the tip of the pen,\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 After several paragraphs, I became frustrated&#8230;I think that demonstrating a picture-perfect gyaku-zuki is worth a thousand words, haha.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/men\/active\/10965938\/How-to-improve-your-punch-power.html\">https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/men\/active\/10965938\/How-to-improve-your-punch-power.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Note that it mentions the need to throw one&#8217;s weight into the punch.\u00c2\u00a0 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&#8217;s some comfort in knowing that each sensei (cept Sensei Trish, haha) has also gained between 50-100 lbs&#8230;which means we have greater &#8220;throw weight&#8221; behind our\u00c2\u00a0slower punches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As you know, in recent weeks, I&#8217;ve been sharing various drills intended to help you understand that the fist (in Japanese, the ken) is only the &#8220;tip of the iceberg&#8221; in terms of understanding where the power of the punch comes from.\u00c2\u00a0 That&#8217;s the reason for the drills associated with keeping the foot &#8220;rooted&#8221; on the ground, leg thrusts, hip rotation, shoulder locks, arm thrusts, etc.\u00c2\u00a0 The fist &#8211; 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&#8217;s so much easier to show this to you by demonstrating it, and by having you practice the drills.\u00c2\u00a0 To augment this, I was going to write up a short note regarding discussing how the &#8220;power of the pen&#8221; actually comes from a mind full of ideas that is transmitted to the tip of the pen,\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 After several paragraphs, I became <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/?p=2452\">[...]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2453,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452\/revisions\/2453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}