Boxing and Kinetic Chain: The Science Behind Boxing

Overview

The vast majority of people are unaware Boxing Kinetic Chain Science Behind that there is a large connection between the lean muscles of the core and punching force. Differently put, the more developed your core muscles are, the better your punch will be.

At first glance, this idea may seem weird! Why is your core important for punching? To answer this question and explain many important concepts, we need to dig deeper into something called the kinetic chain.

In this article, we will cover everything you need to know about boxing and kinetic chain to help you reach optimal performance and understand the science behind boxing.

Watch How Floyd Mayweather is Using Kinetic Chain to Boost His Power

The Science behind Boxing – What is a kinetic chain?

Fitness gurus often say that a healthy body should function like a well-oiled machine. Our human body machine consists of fixed segments that are able to move thanks to the joints.

The concept of boxing and kinetic chain refers to the effect of moving one segment and joint on other parts of the body. In other words, when one is in motion, a chain of events gets triggered, which affects neighboring joints and segments.

In fact, chiropractors, physical therapists, and personal trainers use the power of kinetic chain exercises to accelerate recovery from an injury, improve performance, and sculpture the body.

The secret relationship between boxing and kinetic chain

The arm muscles contribute to the punching force by 24%.

On the other hand, your trunk and legs contribute by 37% and 39%, respectively. Scientists state that the coordinated, sequential summation of forces is what dictates the impact of the delivered force.

In one biomechanical analysis, scientists inspected a common technique in boxing – the straight rear-cross. The analysis revealed that most of the power gets produced by a combined movement of the ankle plantarflexion, knee and hip extension, trunk rotation, and arm extension. Collectively, this accumulative movement is termed kinetic linking.

Early research already emphasized the importance of leg extension at the ankle and the action of the gastrocnemius, rectus femoris, and biceps femoris muscles to generate a powerful punch.

The kinetic chain describes the summation of forces that begins with recruiting the muscles of your legs and travels all the way to your fist.

Now that you understand the science behind boxing, let us briefly discuss the methods that will allow us to practice our new technique:

The first step to deliver a forceful punch is by relying on the lower body to generate power very rapidly. Additionally, your core and hip muscles need to be strong enough to conduct the transmission of power from the lower body to your shoulders and arms. Finally, the joints of your upper body must be mobile enough to transfer the generated energy without too much loss.

Ryan Garcia Style Reflex Bag

Any weaknesses along this kinetic chain will lead to force wasting, which makes your punch less powerful than it should be. What’s more, a dysfunction in the kinetic chain increases your risk of injury since the power generated will get unevenly distributed, placing too much strain on certain areas.

Here are the primary tasks that boxers should focus on to improve their punching force:

• Improve lower body rate of force
• Increase core strength
• Optimize hip mobility
• Train the rotational power of your shoulders
• Incorporate the previous steps into your technique to sharpen the skills

Practical tips to improve your boxing and kinetic chain

To improve the transmission of force from your legs to your arms, here are some practical tips to help you:

• Head to the gym twice a week to work on your lower body strength training, which is particularly beneficial to produce force through the ground.
• The role of your core muscles is more pronounced than you think. Work on the abdominals to improve force transfer. The exercises to train your core muscles should focus on anti-rotation and anti-extension.
• The next step of the kinetic chain is the contraction of the chest, shoulder, and triceps muscles, which is coupled by a contraction of the pulling muscles to create shoulder flexion.
• Once the lower body overcomes the inertia of the ground, heavier loads may be more appropriate.

Boxing and kinetic chain exercises

To reach the best performance and benefit from the power of the kinetic chain, you need to ignore the accepted dogma and start experimenting yourself. This will allow you to discover new approaches that could potentially work better for you.

Here is an example of how you could find a better alternative:

It is true that there are several exercises that focus on specific areas to strengthen the muscles of the chain from the ground to your first. Examples include squats and incline bench presses.

However, static and dynamic solutions may also have value. In this scenario, we are trying to improve your technique via a kinetic chain that resembles the action of punching.

If you tried pushing a car before, you know that the task is challenging and that it places a heavy load on your cardiovascular system. Therefore, you will work on your kinetic chain while also training your heart.

For this reason, we recommend pushing a car on a regular basis to strengthen every segment of the kinetic chain, which is vital to get a good punch.

As you can see from this example, pushing a car is not your regular exercise that you find in YouTube and blogs.

However, it goes to show that experimenting with the available tools you have may produce even greater results than sticking to the conventional way of doing things.

Of course, you may need the help of a professional coach to optimize your exercises and prevent injuries.

In Overall

Using the knowledge of biomechanics to optimize your performance as a boxer is a powerful tool.

That will dramatically increase the force of your punch.

However, you will need to practice the steps we listed until you master the science behind boxing combined with a good technique.

We hope that this article managed to explain the relationship between boxing and kinetic chain and the science behind boxing.