One inch punch

Kung Fu Wang · Oct 9, 2017

Not talking about just to push your opponent away here. To generate powerful punch to hurt (or knock down) your opponent" in

- 3 inch is possible.
- 1 inch is difficult.
- 1 hair distance (0.004 inches) is near impossible.

IMO, the human body has certain limitation. No matter how hard that you may train, there is a boundary that you just cannot go beyond it.

- Do you believe in "1 inch punch"?
- Have you ever seen it is used in the real world?
- If you can hurt your opponent with "1 inch punch", why do you even need to train anything else?

What's your opinion on this?

Danny T · Oct 9, 2017

The 1 inch punch is for training and coordinating the timing of the wrist abduction, the elbow, and the hip. It also is a great show for demos.
When used with the knife it is a very effective penetrating action. When punching an opponent more movement will be required.

Anarax · Oct 9, 2017

The 1 inch punch isn't for combat, it's used as a tool to teach students how to align and flex certain muscles in unison with one another to generate power. Training to generate power in close quarters is a great idea, but I agree there is a certain point when it's just not possible. I would suggest researching Bakmei kung fu, it's notorious for generating power in close quarters. It's a very interesting system and is very rare to find a school that teaches it.

jobo · Oct 9, 2017

there i's a difference between hurting the guy and knocking him over, let's take the no inch punch
power is work done divided by time, so if i move you back violently . i have moved you say a foot and I've,done this in a quarter of a,second then that punch had a good amount of power, . It probably won't hurt a great deal as the backward movement has used up the force. If you are standing with you back against a wall, and that power displaces a rib or crushes your nose, then it will hurt a good amount

for the one inch punch, the above also applies, but because there is some movement prior to contact we can also look at kinetic energy, so for that its a half x massxvelocity squared.

so its how fast you can get you hand in the 1inch and how much of your mass you can transfer, . If you can keep acelerating you hand after contact, say a rib or a nose, then the addition speed gained counts towards you velocity.

so yes you could with good technique and hand speed hurt,someone

JP3 · Oct 9, 2017

Sometimes, inside, all you've got is a short distance to generate the power of the strike. Now... I didn't stop to pull out my ruler to see how far away the target was, but there are good locations to strike in which you can do some debilitating injury if your strike does have the elements discussed above. I'd disagree slightly witht he premise that it's only for training... as if you can do it in the training hall there may be a use for it outside the hall/off the mat.

I've done demos with a 3 board break with what seemed to me to be one inches, but then gain I've always been a bit nearsighted so it could have been 2" or 3", sure. I grant you, that's a slow setup, non-moving target, braced for impact, but sometimes the planets all line up and things can go right.

Also, consider as well the opportunities presented by the advancing/charging opponent, who is bringing with him his own kineticenergy (per Jobo's examples/formulae), so you get to add his to your own, with a resultant sum, i.e. impact.

Didymus · Oct 9, 2017

(Noob perspective)

I think it's great tool for teaching basic body mechanics. Punches with your arm are weak. Forget your arm, punch with the rest of your body... your arm is just for aiming.

I taught my daughter to punch by having her stand next to a bag, arm behind her back and shoulder-check the bag. Hit it hard but don't use your balance. K, now do that through your fist.

Martial D · Oct 9, 2017

My old sifu could knock me back off ballance starting with his fingers contacting my chest. I assure you it's real. I am 6'3 and weighed about 210 at the time.

I can do it too, but it's not exactly something to try in a fight.

jks9199 · Oct 9, 2017

How could learning to explosively generate force with little or no overt movement be useful? H'mm.... That's a bit of a rhetorical question, I think.

These "no-space" punches are ways to learn how to use your whole body in situations where you can't pull back and fire a punch from classic chambers, with little overt stepping...

Yeah, notice I keep saying "overt" stepping... There's a clue in that. Work is force over distance... so if a punch is doing work, something must be moving. Learning how to generate that "movementless movement" is a great tool...

drop bear · Oct 10, 2017

you should be punching like that pretty much anyway. People start too slow and then try to get power by pushing past the target. Which doesn't hurt as much and takes more effeort.

Bill Mattocks · Oct 10, 2017

I left a bruise in the shape of my fist on a students chest from less than one inch. Resting my fist lightly on his gi, snapped my hips and focused it on my fist. He flew.

DanT · Oct 10, 2017

Unfortunately, the One Inch Punch is subject to many myths and lies. It's not something magical or supernatural. It's pure physics.

If you can accelerate your arm to its maximum punching velocity within one inch, then when you contact the target, it doesn't matter how far back your arm's starting position was. Let's look at one of my favourite metaphors:

Situation A:

You are standing in the middle of an empty road. A car is stopped 50 yards in front of you facing you. The driver slams on the gas, and the car reaches a speed of 100 km/h (65 mp/h) and impacts you head on.

Vs

Situation B:

You are standing in the middle of an empty road. The same car is heading in your direction and has been maintaining a constant speed of 100 km/h (65 mp/h) for 6 hours. Eventually, the car reaches you and impacts you head on.

Which collision will cause more damage?

The answer is they will be the same, because both cars impact you at a velocity of 100 km/h.

Same thing in terms of a punch. If we are fighting and my hand is on my jaw, and starts to accelerate towards your face and impacts at a speed of 220 km/h, then it will cause X amount of damage.

If my hand is 1 inch away from your face, and in 1 inch my hand accelerates and reaches a speed of 220 km/h, then when it impacts you it will cause the same amount of damage.

The key is adding in your hip power to both of these punches while still accelerating the arm in both cases to its maximum velocity as quickly as possible.

drop bear · Oct 11, 2017

Your hand will probably go faster with more room to accelerate though.

DanT · Oct 11, 2017

It probably will, but the purpose of one inch punch training is to minimize the amount of space needed for your fist to reach maximum velocity.

PhotonGuy · Oct 12, 2017

Bruce Lee could pull it off.

hoshin1600 · Oct 12, 2017

Not being a WC guy, my question is....is the one inch punch a common thing in WC or was that something Bruce Lee used to do in demos and has become popular?

jobo · Oct 12, 2017

this very much so, the one inch might be at the extreme end, but there are lots of opportunities to punch where you don't have the time to pull the punch back, body shots in a maul for instance, where the,ability to get the most velocity in a,short space time is a marked advantage ,

DanT · Oct 12, 2017

Absolutely.

Just as you said, one inch is the extreme, but if you can accelerate to maximum velocity in one inch, then six inches is no problem.

George Foreman was known for this as well. His hand would be six inches away from your body and he would throw a shovel hook (without retracting his arm) that would drop a bull.

VPT · Oct 17, 2017

One inch punch, or generating power through rapid acceleration in very short distances is a prominent feature of the Bak Mei strategy. I've also seen Bak Mei people break boards from "ground zero". I think the main vehicle for training this power is in the first two core forms of Bak Mei, Jik Bou and Gau Bou Toi.

I believe I can already do this to some extent, but to certain angles and stances it takes some "preparation" in your torso to have movement to transfer through your hands. It's the easier way to do it, otherwise you have to have a push to "two directions" while punching.

The Korean MA prodigy DK Yoo does the one inch punch especially well, but apparently he is also able to generalise it to most other movements. Which, incidentally, starts to look VERY much like how Bak Mei works.

Diagen · Jul 6, 2021

Hair punch just means while in contact with the person. What is your understanding of martial arts and force delivery? Most of you don't understand it. You can generate force and deliver it without moving. Push against a wall -- wall still feels it. It's just physics. Think of those desk ornaments where there's 5 metal balls suspended knocking back and forth into eachother. Force transfers. Put your will and effort into it and try to figure out how to maximize force delivery.

MyFitteLife Ninja · Sep 3, 2022

I believe it is a push more than a punch and my data sems to support that. One inch punch MFLN for post

zzj · Sep 3, 2022

Experienced it a couple of times, and got knocked own by it. Not really sure how you would differentiate a punch/strike from a push, but the impact felt instantaneous, like a hit rather than being moved by a push.

In our training this ‘one inch’ force generation thing isn’t really used as a strike, but to disrupt and set up take downs in a stand up grappling situation. Our ‘push hands’ rules don’t allow for strikes so these sneaky one inch jolts are used to ‘skirt the rules’.

Example in the video below:

This is not strictly about one inch punches but just short /no distance techniques used for such purposes.

One inch punch

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The 'brush block' in Wansu kata

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