Bri­an Chin Le­ung

Many peo­ple in T&T, be­cause of the per­ilous times we live in, are now turn­ing to mar­tial arts, box­ing and kick box­ing as a means of self-de­fense and to keep their bod­ies in shape.Women in par­tic­u­lar can now be seen wrap­ping their hands and strap­ping on gloves, to mix it up in the do­jo or the ring, with a va­ri­ety of male or fe­male op­po­nents, for a heart pound­ing, gut wrench­ing, butt-kick­ing work­out.Even if you are not in­clined to en­ter the world of full con­tact fight­ing; mar­tial artists and box­ers still have to train their strikes and punch­es on maki­waras (Japan­ese punch­ing posts), bags and air shields to en­hance their hit­ting abil­i­ty.How­ev­er, the bags, maki­waras etc, do not on­ly en­hance hit­ting pow­er, they al­so help the body to forge a tru­ly great shape.If you are not in­ter­est­ed in the self-de­fense ben­e­fits, work­ing out on punch­ing bags and maki­waras is still a great way to keep in shape.

Me­chan­ics of a punch

Most fight­ers will tell you that when you hit some­one, you don't just hit them with your fist, but with your en­tire body.Ba­si­cal­ly, what this means is that your en­tire body forces are be­hind that punch, and mul­ti­ple mus­cle groups con­tract and ex­pand in rhyth­mic co-or­di­na­tion to en­sure that the punch is de­liv­ered with max­i­mum ef­fi­cien­cy.The punch will in fact utilise mus­cles of the up­per and low­er body.

Mus­cles used In punch­ing

Let's have a look at the karate re­verse punch, which al­so has many sim­i­lar­i­ties with the mus­cles used in some box­ing punch­es:

• Legs-Whether its karate or box­ing, a pow­er­ful punch needs to be de­liv­ered from a sta­ble base. This base is re­ferred to as a fight­ing stance, which helps with sta­bil­i­ty and bal­ance dur­ing de­liv­ery of the tech­nique. In karate, the re­verse punch is usu­al­ly de­liv­ered from a front stance (zenkut­su-dachi); but re­gard­less of the stance utilised in karate or box­ing, it means that your leg mus­cles are go­ing to con­tract when you form your stance, which trans­lates in­to great mus­cle tone for your legs.

• Abs-You nev­er in­hale when you hit a punch­ing bag, you al­ways ex­hale. The act of ex­hal­ing will re­quire that you con­tract your ab­dom­i­nals so that you can now link the pow­er from your low­er body and up­per body as a sin­gle unit dur­ing im­pact. As a re­sult, you de­vel­op very strong abs.

• Shoul­ders-Your shoul­der mus­cles must be very strong, as they ab­sorb con­sid­er­able shock dur­ing im­pact. This re­sults in very toned, de­fined-look­ing shoul­ders.

• Lats-Your latis­simus dor­si has to con­tract as con­tact is made, in or­der to keep your shoul­ders down and help to sta­bilise it (your shoul­ders) for the shock it will ex­pe­ri­ence on im­pact.

• Tri­ceps-This is one of the im­por­tant mus­cles, to­geth­er with the pec­torals, that move your fist away from your body and to­wards the tar­get (bag or maki­wara). That is why most mar­tial artists and box­ers have well-de­vel­oped tri­ceps.

• Fore­arms-Like your shoul­ders, you must have strong fore­arms to sta­bilise your fist as it makes con­tact with the tar­get.

From the above mus­cle ac­tion, it is easy to see how punch­ing a tar­get can great­ly en­hance your mus­cle tone.

Keep train­ing.

Bri­an Chin Le­ung is a cer­ti­fied per­son­al train­er.