Many martial artists passionately argue that this way of punching delivers extraordinary power, and I won’t argue that it does not. However, it is a much more complex way of punching, and it is not the GKR way. Just as Wing Chun may be more effective than karate, it has a higher cost to learn (it’s difficult and very time consuming), and it’s not what we study.

“Well, why don’t we study it, if it’s better?” you might ask. Well, better is a subjective term. During the course of writing this article, I studied the footwork of a number of top boxers (Ali, Norton, Forman and Frazier), as well as a few UFC fighters (Couture, Ortiz, Hughes) simply to see the length of their fighting stance, and the way that they position the back heel at the end of a punch (on the floor, off the floor, turned in, straight). There was no consistency from one fighter to another, yet you would think if anyone understands how to maximise hip movement and punch power, it would be these world-class athletes. That goes to show that your choice of posture, and movement is never as straight forward as a simple set of rules.

The GKR philosophy is this: to add mass to a punch, you need to turn your hips at the end of a strike, so that all of your body weight is delivered only at the very moment of impact. But there’s more than that: to add acceleration, you need to perform the entire hip movement in the shortest possible time (acceleration = (finishing speed minus starting speed) divided by time). There’s also an argument to be made for being completely static at the start for greatest results. Why static? Because the faster you are already moving, the less difference there is between the start and end speed, so less momentum is generated. When you are static, you maximise that speed differential, and thus the force of the strike.