How to train for punching power

Training for punching power is a very specific endeavor. But to look at much of the information available online right now, you'd think that a boxer should be training the same way as a bodybuilder. All of the most popular fitness websites and magazines include heavy weight training and gimmicky exercises in their guides on increasing punching power. In some instances, heavy weight training takes up the majority of a routine supposedly designed to increase punch power.

This is of course completely wrong. The kind of strength, speed, technique and stamina you require to be an effective warrior - be it in boxing, MMA, Muay Thai, or jujitsu - is completely different to the skills and abilities you need to become jacked, swole, or statically strong. Although workouts like the One Punch Man workout routine are meant to be a joke (Saitama couldn't possibly have become so strong and powerful doing this kind of training), the irony is that his training is far more inline with what you would expect from a fighter than many of the kinds of training you see in comics or movies (or in today's fitness magazines).

Mike Tyson put it best when he said that weight training is anathema to a boxer; it is completely counterproductive for achieving the kind of speed, mastery of technique, and fluidity of movement that a boxer needs to be successful. Throughout the peak of his career, the only weight training Mike Tyson ever did was light barbell shrugs; all of his power came from heavy bag training and technique work, coupled with hundreds and hundreds of reps of pushups, situps, and hours of sparring.

Although being strong will obviously help you punch harder, nothing helps you punch harder than mastering technique. And to master technique, you need to train, train, and train some more. A 20 minute session on a heavy bag every other day will do more for your punching power than bench pressing very heavy 3 times per week.

If you want to train to throw a more powerful punch, follow the training advice given by real experts; ignore the bodybuilding-centric workout routines you see in most of the fitness magazines. Boxers don't really lift weights!

Edit
Pub: 18 May 2020 15:16 UTC
Views: 312