Boxing punches and karate punches are not done the same way nor is the weight, balance, stance, or muscle groups involved the same. It is to complicated to explain. it is difficult enough to try to teach someone. Impossible to teach using written media.
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I have boxed and I teach martial arts. A friend that I used to box with growing up whom went pro won some belts and even fought for the heavyweight title want me to teach his son karate. I have another 3 students whose father teaches boxing and was a pro boxer. These people come to our dojo because we are doing something right.
Yes you can learn to punch correctly if you are being taught correctly.
In competition there are rules. Most karate tournaments do not allow punches to the face. But that doesn't mean in the dojo you will not get a busted lip or nose. What it means is that you better have control over your strikes. We teach that ever strike has a specific target, pressure point, joint, etc. These areas can cause severe damage. Competitions are not a representative of our art. For safety reasons you can't strike those areas. If your school only focus on competitions you are most likely not learning the true art. You are only learning a watered down version of the art.
Normally they should teach you how to strike well....
In the average Shotokan competition there are light contact punches to the head and a bit more contact with the kicks to the head, however a much harder type of contact is avoided since too much hard striking to the head is not good for your health and that is why it is avoided...
Most karateka today have not been taught proper alignment in tsuki technique.
At the end of the punch, or tsuki, they wind up with the elbow pointing to the side. It should be pointing to the ground - downwards. They are taught to fully extend the arm. The arm should never be fully extended. They are not taught to use their own body as a guide to the correct target. They use the arm to punch instead of using the koshi to catapult the attack.
My thoughts.
Karate students are generalists.
Because Karate as a style covers so much you tend not to get such fine detail as you do in something so specialised as Boxing nor do you find people who have such specialised ability.
Also the presence of all these other elements presents the need for a different approach get your hands on some Boxing, Kickboxing and MMA videos and watch them, you'll notice that all three of these events contain punching but they all do it very differently.
They're suppose to, I was taught it by my dad. Had to get into a stance and just punch(twist arm) then pull back and do it again for the other one. The punching is not the problem but the stance is, you'd get tired after 2 minutes unless your legs are like... really strong.
When sparring in karate it is usually non contact. Even in competition, it's point scoring and is semi contact. I suppose you'll be able to keep your brain cells which is a good thing
I have done shotokan for 6 years and have done boxing for three when I started boxing I got taught all of these little technicalities which made my punches so much stronger. My dojo and all the other dojos I have trained at are certain that you only twist your hips to get power when there is so much more to punching than that. They dont even let you punch the face in sparring or in competitions, so what are your thoughts?
