Ask A Genius 420 – The Physics of Punching (3)
October 22, 2018
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Rick Rosner: In an earlier time, when I was a kid in the 1970s, I had been bullied and ridiculed a lot. In 9th grade, I punched 6 classmates. I did not get into trouble. But that was a different time.
Any punch you do of people (not drywall) should be before you are legally an adult. Unless you have been punched first, you probably don’t want to punch someone, because you can be sued, especially in America.
If you are going to punch somebody in the head, I recommend the cheek. The side of the face, say between the cheek and the jawbone, where you give them a message; that they have been punched in the face.
If you hit square on with the greatest surface area, you probably won’t break a knuckle or damage them too bad. Then you won’t leave a mark. If you leave more of a mark, then that’s bad, because it is more evidence of punching them.
You can punch them in the soft areas, like the gut or even in the groin, which won’t leave a mark and is helpful when you’re denying when you did it later. You don’t want to hit them in the mouth.
Drunk people get in fights and punch people in the mouth. It is filthy. There is a chance that their teeth will puncture your hand. If drunk, a) you may not remember. You may awaken and have a swollen hand.
Your hand is swollen because it is superinfected. The teeth break the skin, I have known people who actually walked away with a tooth stuck in their hand without realizing it until later.
Teeth are filthy. If you relax your hand, your hand has been injected with all sorts of mouth bacteria. As you relax your hand, you pull the tendons back further up your arm that has been made filthy from the teeth.
Then you go back to sleep and forget when you wake up, you have a horribly infected hand. You can go online and read the medical journals about this. Also, if you are going to be punching stuff and be effective, you want to study punch mechanics.
It is punching effectively – not punching strategy if you study boxing – that is about transmitting force through your fist. Those aren’t very effective because your fist and lower arm do not weigh that much.
And the person you’re a person can see it coming if you are punching people against my advice. Instead, you want to punch straight out, so by the time the punch lands; you’re pushing with your whole arm out through your arm.
You have also rotated your upper body, so you’re leaning into the punch. So, you’re transmitting not just the weight of your fist and arm but, to some extent, some of the force and inertia of your upper body.
So, by the time the punch lands, your arm should be almost straight and your left shoulder – if you’re punching with your left hand – should be rotated towards the thing that you’re punching to rotate and provide a strong base, the base of your body, to add force to your punch.
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Authors[1]
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing
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