Power of the Karate Punch
The Machidas are the most well-known family of karate practitioners in MMA. Here, Chinzo Machida applies a traditional karate technique, the reverse punch, for a knockout win over Jamar Ocampo (2017). So where does the power come from, and why is it effective?
Though the finish took seconds, unpacking it will take longer.
First, notice their distance. It doesn't appear that Machida can reach his opponent with his right hand. Ocampo is out of range, even from Machida's lead hand. This is karate's point-fighting distance.
In the first frame, Machida's right hip faces away from his opponent. Machida's lead hand isn't gauging the distance to Ocampo's face but instead reaching for the closest target, Ocampo's left wrist. Grabbing the wrist allows Machida to lower his opponent's guard while also pulling his opponent closer to him. This is an invisible part of punching exchangesâhand fighting. It's invisible because it's often only engaged by one fighter while the other is oblivious. Some aren't even aware that this is a part of fighting.
From here, you will notice several things happening. First, Machida's right arm corkscrews, and his right hip faces his opponent. The power comes from the hipâMachida pivots off his back foot while slightly dropping into a kneel, driving his body weight forward and down.
Notice how Machida doesn't overswing his punch, where he's flinging himself forward. In fact, he's punching and evading, just in case there's a counter. Since the power is coming from the hip, his foot must stay planted on the ground to send kinetic force from the ground to his foot to his hip to his shoulder to his fist to his opponent's face. In fighting, power comes from the ground up. That is the nature of gravity.
Machida threw a similar punch earlier in the fight, but Ocampo read the threat and countered with a leg kick as he kept his guard up. Machida was also flinging himself forward, lifting his back foot off the ground, losing power, and unable to move out of the way of the leg kick because he was effectively standing on one leg. Reaching forward with your punches and overswinging is a dangerous game becauseâyesâyou do get closer to your opponent, but you're leading with your face. If he had punched instead of kicked, it could have been Ocampo with the knockout victory.
In a proper karate punch, the head remains above the hips. The whole body comes with you, or it doesn't. That's what happens with Machida's final punch. The hip is the key to karate strikes (and good strikes in general). They're also deceptive because the opponent can't read whether it's a kick or a punch. They look the same because they generate power in the same way. The hip creates the force, and then the shoulder accelerates it. Punching power does not come from the shoulder. If it does, it's slow and telegraphed.
If your aim is true, there should be no obstacles in its path.
Notice how Machida twists like a pellet drum, where his right shoulder pushes forward as his left pulls back. This increases the power and length of his right punch. It's ground reaction force coupled with torque.
Imagine hammering a screw into a wall vs. impacting while twisting. The difference is depth. You can punch by extending your arm or rotating your whole body into your first. This is the concept of one strike, one kill in karate. Load the weight of your body, then drive with your hips through your fist. If you have limited opportunities to strike, or it's unclear how many chances you'll get, then you have to make every strike count.
Ocampo drops to the floor, but Machida keeps his eyes on his opponent and stays ready.
The karate practitioner can turn the tide with one radical blow. Then we are all karate fighters.
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