It is said that, just like some people are born naturally stronger, or naturally more athletic,  some people are born with more punching or knockout power then others.

However, just like strength and athleticism, punching power can be developed with the proper mma training workouts. The key is to take what talent you were or weren’t born with and focus on developing it from there – whining about “unfortunate genetics” won’t get you anywhere.

First and foremost, we must understand what constitutes punching power, then we can properly understand how to develop it.

The first thing mma fighters must understand is the fundamentals, which is technique.

In order to generate the most force in your blows, you have to learn and constantly work on mastering the technique behind each punch. Boxing is one of the best style’s of combat to really learn the minute detail in throwing every type of punch in MMA.

Once you learn good technique, then you can work on developing power in your technique.

Power in your punches is essentially coordinating  each muscle involved in the movement of a punch to deliver maximum speed output and maximum strength output harmoniously.

The major muscles involved in punching are your legs, core, chest, back, shoulders, and arms….. yeah, pretty much all the major muscle groups in the body.

What many beginning fighters and athletes aren’t aware of however, is how to properly develop these muscle groups to coordinate these together for strength, speed, and technique.

For example, most people would think that developing a strong bench press is a good exercise to develop your punching power.

However, an exercise like heavy bench presses alone won’t develop punching power for several reasons:

1) The bench press only develops the chest, shoulders, and arms, leaving out many of the major muscle groups involved in throwing a punch.

2) The bench press is a pushing motion, whereas punching is rotating motion (the majority of power in your punch’s comes from your legs and core, and how powerfully you can rotate your hips).

3) Training for a fast and powerful punch by doing heavy bench press’s is like sprinters doing heavy lunges.

Now, what I’m not saying is that the bench press is necessarily a bad exercise for developing punching power.

Increasing your muscle strength in your chest and arms is a good thing, just like having strong legs is a good thing for sprinters.

However, the problem is that the development of your punching power would be very incomplete if these type of basic strength exercises were all you were doing.

Following the example with sprinters, though it’s important to have strong legs, it’s equally important that they learn to move this new strength quickly, and they do this with other supplemental exercises such as sprinting, sprinting with resistance, etc.

Summary

So by learning to develop strength and speed in these muscles, then training your body to develop the coordination between these muscles and the movement with technique training, speed drills, and other strength and power exercises, you’ll be well on your way to developing your punching power.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this article, where I go over 3 exercises in detail that will increase your punching power by developing all the major movements and muscles involved in striking.

Train hard, train smart, fellow fighters and fans.

Derek Manuel
MMA Training Workouts