I think that’s really the whole point - one of the few things I remember from my limited martial arts training was that when breaking boards it was critical to punch through the boards. In other words, the punch didn’t “end” at the surface of the board but followed through to full extension.
I studied for a couple years from one of Bruce Lee’s student’s schools. We did the one-inch punch.
Stranger’s explanation is accurate. The technique takes advantage of coiled momentum generated from twisting your hips, shifting your center of gravity forward, and turning your torso. The fist is just the end point of all of the other motion and momentum generated. Nothing magical, just non-intuitive and different to how rudimentary haymaker punches are thrown.
A few things to keep in mind:
It is a soft-target technique that continues to accelerate into the body. The fist travel is really over a foot all told, it only starts a couple of inches from the point of contact. Either your opponents midriff has to move, or your fist, and you use leverage from your stance to ensure that your fist has the right-of-way.
Done correctly, you get a sort of shock-wave through the body. Feels like your organs have been scrambled 
Similar to getting the wind knocked out of you. It hurts like all hell when hit, even through padding.
Bruce was a showman and an experimenter. The technique isn’t really intended to be a preferred fighting method or some unbeatable technique, it is really meant as a demonstration of building as much force into the smallest amount of linear travel as possible.
Breaking out the various pieces of the whole technique (the stance shift, wrist flexion, leverage) can give your punches way more power and speed than without, it’s surprising how much harder I hit with these elements.
Bruce was a showman. None of this is anything that other martial arts don’t have. It’s just packaged in an effective and interesting manner. If alive today, he’d call it “iPunch”
iPunch. uFall. Nice!
Bruce lee was a student of the most anatomically logical and straightforward of martial arts, namely wing chun.
It’s core principle is based on “The centreline”. ie guarding your’s and exposing and attacking their’s. This practice along with it’s few simple forms comprise a simple structure for the martial art but have huge implications for it’s later application.
If you imagine a man with an arm in the centre of his chest and if his legs were joined together, well he wouldn’t be a great runner for sure!!! However, put him in front of a punch bag!!! He woudn’t be able to deliver repeated blows very efficiently but his whole body would be like a piston of 6 joints. the ankle, the knees, the waist, the shoulder, the elbow and the wrist. If he could get them to all work from the bottom and to align perfectly at the point of contact, then he would not only employ the power of his muscles but the power of his fixture to the ground and it’s density!!! Now, we don’t have an arm in the centre of our chest. Our legs aren’t fixed together!! So, the wing chun practitioners try to get theri arms as close to the centre as possible. Then, when they punch, they start from a very particular stance and begin to deliver force from the ground up, launching themselves at the opponent. Each joint is trained to extend with precise timing in succession and kept as relaxed as possible until the point of contact to not impinge movement. This all takes years of training to get and perfect. Then there is another level. It’s about managing distance. So, you’ve learnt the other stuff. Now, you have to learn how to do it in smaller increments so you can do it when it’s needed…up close when things are confusing, in the street!!! So, that’s where it comes from!!! Hope that helps
!!!
All the zombies Wing Chun tonight!
To give a 1st person shot at a 1 inch punch my teacher uses them on me all the time when we are sparring. the 1 inch punch is a full force punch which derives it’s power from the feet first stabilizing the body and pulling against the ground to build the initial power that is followed by straightening the knees to add to the power then locking the hip into place further adding power and stabilizing the body,then the arm turns over from an open hand with finger tips brushing the target into a fist that moves the one remaining inch into the target resulting in an impact of energy that can be used for pushing, or it can be used to create an impact just under the surface of the skin, or as deep as is required to hit the target organ. My teacher is always telling me that a 1 inch punch has to be as powerful as a punch that starts at the hips or it’s ineffective. To anyone who thinks that a 1-inch punch is just for show, my teacher demonstrates the power by first using a normal punch to my solar plexus, then using a 1-inch punch to the solar plexus. Hurts like heck, and if the person using the punch isn’t in good enough shape,you can break your own joints with the power of it.
Not a big fan of Braaaiiins jokes, but that was pretty funny.
Fighting walls of text since 1973. It’s taking longer than we thought.
Simple explanation,it isn’t just push it is a powerful close ranged attack.
And it’s more than one inch. More like a foot or so.
tl;dr, bored already w/ thread.
Moderator Note
Leo Bloom, this qualifies as threadshitting and has no place in General Questions. No warning issued, but don’t do this again.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Everyone loves to talk about the mechanics of 'how the punch could generate such power", as if the demo proves that it is a powerful punch. But the real scam here is that the demo does not prove a powerful punch at all. Proof? Turn the guy sideways and punch his arm, notice he does not fall down!!
Of course people don’t fall down as easily when hit from the side as when hit from the front. What’s that supposed to prove?
(and I’m really curious what a powder punch would look like)
“What’s that supposed to prove?”
It proves that the one-inch-punch is not a powerful punch. It proves that it is a bit of showmanship that is supposed to make it look powerful. No one ever said, “Hey, that Bruce Lee has a not-so-powerful one-inch-punch!” Heck, even today, 50 years later, it is mistaken as a powerful punch: just look at the Wikipedia write up: One-inch punch - Wikipedia .
You asked what a “powder punch would look like”, this is it!
It’s in the script:
[Bruce Lee throws 1" punch, victim falls down]
Girl 1: He’s such a man …
Girl 2: I want to bear his children …
Girl 3: [Look of delight] (she’s non-union)
Around all of our muscles we have this stringy lining of fascia. It’s very springy. Basically the trick to things like the one inch punch is to load and unload the fascia. I can do the one inch punch trick, but with a driver on a golf range. I place the club an inch behind the ball. Without moving the club, I push backwards with my left toe, rotate my hips backwards, transferring weight to my back foot. My torso and shoulders rotate as much as possible without moving the club. I’m sort of coiled like a spring with my fascia stretched out. All I do then is push off with my right foot transferring weight to my front foot. My hips than continue the acceleration, than my torso, than my shoulders. finally my arms and wrists snap and the club head and the club head is suddenly caught in all that acceleration I’ve generated with my body. The ball usually goes about two hundred yards.
If you watch pictures of pitchers throwing a ball, it’s basically the same thing. The ball doesn’t really move all that much during the windup and when it does it moves slowly. as the pitcher uncoils then suddenly the ball accelerates very fast in Avery short space.
It’s like cracking a whip, whether throwing a baseball, a punch, swinging a racket, a club, one is basically using their whole body to generate force than simply transferring it suddenly.
In throwing a punch, all this loading do fascia and transferring of weight is not necessarily as obvious as a pitchers windup, but it’s still occurring.
Although the investing (intramuscular) fascia certainly has a significant role in connecting and coordinating muscle action (and may play a significant role in proprioception of the musculature) it doesn’t act to store energy in the fashion you suggest (e.g. loading and unloading the fascia like a rubber band). Again, the impulse that is delivered in a one inch punch is developed by powerful movement of the core musculature (transversus abdominis, rectus abdominis, gluteus maximus, and internal and external obliques) and bracing (grounding in boxing terms) by rigidizing the hip and leg structure during transfer. The small amount of momentum generated by the movement of the fist is almost incidental, hence why only a short distance is needed to develop power. Because the resulting target is heavy (relative to the striking fist and arm) it essentially acts as a closed kinematic chain and force is generated by relative resistance between the target and the ground.
Throwing a baseball (which is an open chain movement) is an entirely different motion which requires a whipping motion of the arm to get adequate speed for complete momentum transfer, with the arm traveling the same speed as the ball at the point of release (hence why pitchers have so many elbow and shoulder problems; they’re essentially throwing their arm away at 80 to 90 mph). No one has ever thrown a fast pitch with just an inch of travel because it isn’t physiologically possible for the human body to generate adequate speed in that short of a distance, even though a pitching machine can do so in less than the span of a pair of 4 inch rollers.
It is true that in golf the necessary force to delivery a ball several hundred meters can be generated with just a few inches of travel of the club. The function of the long, over the cross shoulder windup isn’t to build up more momentum but to allow the golfer to make a more consistent delivery starting from a forcibly closed position than would be possible with a shorter windup. For most of the swing, the arms are just guiding the club with little added momentum. The same is true in swinging a kettlebell; the force is delivered on the first portion of the upswing by the quick movement (popping) of the hips, and the arms just serve to restrain the radial movement of the bell until it gets near the top of swing.
I know among the body work/myofascial release crowd the fascia has taken significance of almost mystical proportions with regard to athletic performance and chronic dysfunction, and as a critical element of the connective tissue system of the human body it has been largely disregarded by traditional anatomy and muscle physiology, but it isn’t this magical energy storage and power generation system; it’s just kind of like skin for your insides; it holds everything in place, helps to maintain elasticity and cushion between muscles and organs, and may play a role in determining a sense of body position, but the generation and delivery of force over time is governed by the muscles and their interaction with the skeletal system and external environment.
Stranger