Thanks Chris.

From your post I definitely picked up at least one thing that I had totally omitted: Shoulder to tucked chin.

...but I remain a little confused if the rest of the quotes were supposed to point out specifics where I had something wrong.

Do you know -- or know of a source -- that explains the bio-mechanical and technical (physics) reasons for turning the hand palm down (and I presume doing this from the shoulder as I wrote)?

Everybody (including the karate folks and my own beliefs) seems to argue for this, but I am wondering if there is any actual science behind it

Also, my coach is wanting me to hit both hard and fast with the jab -- are there any (technical) tricks for doing all three of the following on the jab:

  1. Hitting hard
  2. Getting the hand fully back
  3. Avoiding a 'pause' between repeated jabs
...or must I just keep hitting until the muscles/nervous system make physiological changes?

My jabs hit fairly hard, but I am definitely introducing a (very) slight pause between jabs when doubling, tripling etc. I want to remove that delay but keep a strong punch and good form (getting the hand back to guard.)

Oh, and yes, I did put a lot of thought into this, and I work hard each bag session to put in my maximum without saving anything 'for later'. Some of this will improve with more training/development, but I believe that the perfect punch will always be stronger and more effective at any particularly physical level.

[Oh, and yes, I lost a little bit while rebuilding the punch from my original approximation -- had to retrain, still retraining the neurology and muscles to automate the new behavior -- but that period should be over in a few more training sessions. Sort of like changing the grip in golf will set someone back for a bit but if the grip is truly better the re-learning pays back in the long term.]

Thanks for thinking this stuff through with me and for the advice. Also thanks to Scrap for the encouragement and for originally writing some of the quotes you posted to help me.

--
HerbM