Any Tips For a Beginner?

Sorry for the moderately lame topic, but I AM a beginner...I've started out just messing around with a Heavy Bag, and I just want to learn more technique. I'm pretty fast with the punches, quick on my feet, but my punches aren't that powerful. I can do SOME footwork and still keep my balance, but I just would like some tips/ suggestions to ahem...get better!

To get more power in your punches you should put your whole body into it! Use your hips! A good tip is; instead of trying to hit the target, try to hit through it! Put a snap at the end of any move and you will get more power! Also, for more speed, don't tighten your fist before the point of impact! Speed is power! Another good tip for foot work is to tie a piece of wrope to both ankles the width of you shoulders and spar or punch on the bag! Do this for about an hour and your footwork will be bad a$s! It is kind of hard at first, but after about fifteen minutes you will be used to it! Ofcourse there is also Physical Training! That will help tremendously!
HAVE FUN!

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Martial_Arts_Rock:
Sorry for the moderately lame topic, but I AM a beginner...I've started out just messing around with a Heavy Bag, and I just want to learn more technique. I'm pretty fast with the punches, quick on my feet, but my punches aren't that powerful. I can do SOME footwork and still keep my balance, but I just would like some tips/ suggestions to ahem...get better![/QUOTE]

Do what your teacher has taught you to do, but have patience. It'll come.
There's also boxing books and now even MA books on drills with the bag. But the key word is patience. As that very famous sensei once said: "Ah, Daniel- san, first learn stand, then learn fly!"

This may also sound lame, but the advise to a beginner or a master (if necessary) is always the same -- practice, practice, practice -- do not think great fighters like Mohd. Ali, Bruce Lee, Joe Lewis etc. are what they are because of talent alone; they sweated buckets. Look at any fight of any kind, how many "techniques" can you count? Not many? Why? Most of them are repetitions or variations of a few pet techniques. Its the EXECUTION of these few techniques that decides any fight -- friendly or otherwise.

Having said that, perhaps as a reward for your patience in reading the above, there is one training method which I believe every beginner should try as it provides a solid foundation for developing a "snap" punch as mentioned by Emotionless Skill and other related skills. There is a definite method to develop the snap / whip punch. There is no point in telling someone to practice without suggesting something to practice at. So here goes.

First hold a baseball or any ball of similar size in each hand. Maintain the shape of the fingers, especially the gentle, circular curve, fingers apart. Having got the shape right, discard the ball and do push-ups off a wall with the fingers. The important thing here is maintaining the curve of the fingers. Even the thumb must be slightly curved. As you get stronger, move your feet farther from the wall, untill you are strong enough to do the push-ups off the floor and still maintain the shape of the curved fingers. After about a month of push-ups, hold out any hand in a "knife-hand" and tense ONLY THE HAND up to the wrist and not the whole arm -- to do this use the other hand to touch / feel the muscles in the upper arm opposite the biceps, I believe its called the triceps. These muscles must be absolutely soft while the knife-hand is very hard. Maintain this hard-soft position and SLOWLY (without relaxing the tension on the knife-hand and softness of the triceps) change the knife-hand to a tiger claw (with fingers wide apart) and hold the claw for 5 seconds and back to knife-hand again, ALL THE TIME maintaining the hard-soft position. At no time do you relax your knife-hand or the softness of the triceps. Do this exercise for about twenty times for each hand and at the end of it you should have trouble holding a glass of water, because all the small little internal muscles which are seldom used are now getting a real workout; all due to the hard-soft position. Next hold a tight fist of any hand and rotate slowly only the fist one way then the other WHILE MAINTAINING the hard-soft position. Do this for a couple of months and you will surprise yourself. Now do the snap or whip punch; its the little internal muscles that actually do the snap or whip, not the big muscles which are better at pulling and pushing.

As for the push-ups, there are people who can hold the curve shape of the fingers and from a standing position slam face first towards an un-carpetted floor and stopped with the fingers only; many people can do this with the palms, but with the fingers? Of course you start off by slamming against a wall first. If you can do this and keep up the hard-soft exercise (increasing it to fifty times per hand) after a couple of years you can hold someone's wrist tight with the thumb and first two fingers (like an eagle's talon) and give it a strong twist. The skin on the wrist will break as if a knife is used to do a circular cut all round the wrist.

A by-product of the above exercise is also to develop a rock-hard forearm to take a hit from a stick. When your training is quite advanced, you will notice that in the hard-soft position you can tense the muscles of the forearm alone (the part where you will normally block a stick) Maintain this forearm muscle lock for five minutes for each arm. Now comes the important part; (which are basic exercises for some hard chi gung systems) look at the tensed forearm; on the slow even exhalation IMAGINE the power of your whole body following your exhalation to the tensed forearm. Do this exhalation as many times as you like.

Those who have touched my forearm have often asked if I had done a surgical operation to put a piece of metal platting under my skin.

Good luck and I hope you will use your knowledge for good and pass on the knowledge.

[This message has been edited by ButterflyPalm (edited 11-02-2004).]

[This message has been edited by ButterflyPalm (edited 11-03-2004).]