Everything you wanted to know about shockwaves but were afraid to ask

Everything you wanted to know about shockwaves but were afraid to ask

When it comes to developing a snap or shockwave on the end of any strike, this can take years to develop, just through normal training methods, but and this is a big but when you isolate the shockwaves and train them specifically, there is a significant increase in your explosive precision and effectiveness of your strike.

Q. Aren’t you just reinventing something that’s already used?

There’s nothing new in martial arts but, things can get forgotten or the actual reason for some training can be lost, like punching with light weights or paper training to develop explosiveness in your punch. this isolation training was there for a very good reason, it made one hell of a difference to your striking, this type of training is pretty obsolete in modern MMA, boxing gyms, and if it’s not known or being used in MMA or boxing than that makes a technique new to that specific sport. Here’s a clip showing
MORIO HIGAONNA

talking about traditional ways of training shockwaves on the end of the strike and how important the breathe is

and another showing some paper training and a makiwara set up for a light snap as well

While ill also use curtains,magazines etc,For the paper training I preffer to use laminated sheeting, because it gives much greater feedback to the user, as paper is a little light it can make your proggression much slower I like to place a target in a small area of the sheet ,so that I’m always striking at a focused area, rather than a general direction, you can train hundreds a day on the laminated sheet, but because your training your tendons more than your muscles, it can take them longer to recover if you push them (repetitive strain)one way to reduce this is to train the shockwave in a much slower way, and rather than doing 500 in one session you will be better, doing 100 in sets through the day, this is exactly the same with, punching with weights

Q.is breathing that important?

While your shockwaves can be trained and done without any breath at all,when you breath at the right time during the strike the shockwave will increase significantly and is the only way to fully use the whole body kinetically to strike,years of training the breath,refines the intenal release of a crisper,shockwave

Q. How many types of shockwave are there?

        

Any Boxer, Muay Thai or MMA fighter all use exactly the same ways to create a shock or force on the end of their strikes and there are three types of shockwave produced each one is a step up in power/explosiveness and can be trained on the end of most strikes.not just punches,these can also be combined.

Pull back
this is punching but its all about the pullback,the faster you pull back the morte power you get
your not acually trying to hit the target with thisjust pull back before you land

The Light snapping shockwave

This is like a crisp snap on the end of a boxing jab were the hand is thrown out and pulled straight back, creating a whip or snap on the end of the punch, done correctly this feels like you’ve still got weight in your hand, a bit like throwing out a ball and chain. Bouncing the head onto the front foot and back

The Deep snapping shockwave

This is similar to the light snap but a step up, it carries more weight and explosiveness, but rather than snapping straight back, I’m snapping into the target, before returning the hand, transferring more bodyweight into the punch and holding my head over my front foot for longer to allow more weight to be transferred

The Ripping shockwave

The ripping shockwave is the most powerful of the shockwaves, this again is similar to the Deep snap but it comes in and is ripped out, on more of a 45% angle, taking full advantage of the cores muscles and torque and is significantly stronger than the deep snap

The kinetic chop

The kinetic chop is a mix of the top three and can only be achieved through refining the first three shockwaves, its an absolute beast when it comes to Raw explosive impact on the end of your punch, it uses the refined snap from the first two and the raw power from the ripper, producing the ultimate in explosive punching, particularly when it’s on the end of a kinetic punch

here a closer look at shockwaves with punches,palm heels and sticks

Q. Don’t I learn these anyway in normal training?

You do learn how to develop a snap through normal training but it takes years to refine. So if you’re not training to isolate the shockwaves on the end of your punches, then when you do your effective punching  will increase no end and continue to improve, you have got the yin and the yang in striking. With power generation and the kinetic chain once you’ve refined these, you will reach a limit like a plateau, where your body is strong and your mechanics are refined, once you get to this point continuing to train the same way continuously will only bring long slow improvements. This is where the shockwaves, come into their own.

When you break it down there is only really two parts of a punching movement that reaps great rewards when you isolate them and train them specifically, you’ve got the switch between each strike and the shockwaves on the end, training the switch between strikes, increases speed and familiarity and flow this can be seen on the 100 punches in 13 seconds video what I’m actually doing there is throwing 100 light shockwaves whilst training the switch at the same time, and because I’m doing it much faster than I would normaly throw 100 full lenth punches,I can train much more of these in a shorter time,with less strain, this in turn increases the speed of my normal full length punches’ as well as the explosiveness at the end of the strikes.and the speed of my switch between strikes.or even the speed of throwing the same strike again repeatedly.

Since training the shockwaves I've not levelled out or hit a plateau, an I’ve only continued to increase the explosiveness and speed of my punches and I’m 44 this year, I see the same in Kieth at 70 year old .Like me, He simply couldn't do most of the strength and power training needed for a normal young guy in his twenties. But he still continues to improve his striking by isolating the shockwaves.

The more you refine the end of a strike the less energy you need to try to hit with power, because you know exactly how to finish the strike, so you continue to hit harder, faster and more explosively, rather than reaching a plateau through your normal routine.
heres me running through the shockwaves on the waterbag

heres some scientific measurements on the difference's in the shockwaves power levels

James came down for a session on the shockwaves heres a review
James Whitmore "And they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks LOL... i would love to do a full review of our session karl, but as this is Facebook i'll keep it short. Let's start with a little intro !!! i have been involved with MA for longer than i can remember and trained with many of the best coaches the world has to offer... now just because i have trained with some of the elite doesn't mean that other less notorious coaches have less to give? in fact i really don't care who you are, what you've achieved or how many fights you may have had? what i want to know is what you can do for me??? This brings me to karl's session today, i came across Karl by chance and thought i would give his shockwaves theories a crack because whats the worst that can happen... Nothing? so of i went on a 3 hr journey to hook up with karl, we had a quick intro and it was straight into the training, i have always had a reasonable power base and technique has never been an issue, however i knew there was something more to attain regarding power and impact? and with the many novel ways karl has of improving the finish on any technique it wasn't long before i actually understood where my failings were, after a just one hour, karl had given me enough tools and concepts to keep me improving my impact for many months to come . All i would like to mention is that if you get the chance to train with karl or maybe you are struggling with generating real power then i can assure you, you will not go far wrong having karl take a little look and pointing in the right direction,,, I enjoyed our meeting today and once the new club is up and running i will certainly be inviting karl down to take a session ... i can give no higher praise than that! cheers"

My new shockwaves for MMA DVD part 2 is available now at £19.99

CLICK HERE FOR SHOCKWAVES DVD

shockwave punching playlist from youtube

7 VIDEOS  TO IMPROVE YOUR EXPLOSIVE STRIKING
shockwave punching playlist

ADRENAL TRAINING FOR WOMENS SELF DEFENCE

 This is another older clip,First time adrenalin stress training for self defence,Nita had trained JKD for years but not experienced adrenalin training,you can see how she was initialy overwelmed,she became acustomed to the adrenal rush and also found the switch to really turn the amazonian.and use aggeresion as a tool,to increase effect,if she was using the correct breath as she struck it would be much harder,this again is just about training it as a responce.

Overcoming Fear and building Aggression in women’s self defence

I’ve had the pleasure of teaching one or two ladies over the years and the one common problem they did have was building aggression. While it’s not always the case, most women live a reasonably calm life and rarely show aggression Everybody’s got the ability to be angry and fearful , and I think it’s important to understand fear, I tend to look at it like a useful tool, fear is there to tell you when you’re in danger, and it also releases chemicals that can help your body work faster and stronger to overcome dangerous situations, I’ve trained myself to see fear as a good thing rather than the definition, just like the physical training to land a harder punch on a bag, you can train your emotions  as well as a response to fear or danger. When you don’t understand the physical effects of fear e.g. fight, flight or freeze and adrenalin. These can be totally debilitating when not understood. And completely shut down your offence. But when fully understood they can help you massively.

Now when you look at aggression, if your aggressive when you strike a bag or target and visualise trying to inflicted harm on your attacker, and with training the body will respond to this with adrenalin as if you’re in a fight to a certain extent, because when you’re throwing strikes on a pad, in your mind your visualising a dangerous situation and the body responds, you will start to be able to switch the aggression on and off when needed. The problem some people have, not just women, is just being aggressive to start with, because generally from an early age your told not to show aggression or get angry, you could even be embarrassed to show such a raw emotion, and it can take time to bring out the lioness or Amazonian, so to speak.

One way I've found particularly useful is using thoughts to trigger aggression. most people have a thing or person that makes them particularly angry and all that your doing is taking that feeling and placing that on the end of every offensive strike, like cruelty to an innocent animal or thinking about someone causing harm to an innocent child or animal, possibly your child or a close friends child, visualise yourself in between the child and the attacker, it’s not about you it’s about the child, you’re the Childs only chance for safety, at this point you have no choice you have to fight back to protect the innocent, take all that anger at the thought of them harming the chid, and use that in an aggressive attack to overwhelm the attack and get the child to safety. just be aware that to much uncontrolled aggression can be just as ineffective as none at all, your focusing on a goal not going into a red mist, while aggression, intent and determination alone can be enough to come out the other side safely, add that to a trained skill set of explosive strikes and you’ve got some seriously effective self defence.

Here’s a clip of Jane one of the first students of mine, looking at her progression over a couple of years, she was very shy at first but as her confidence built with her training, it was like she became a different person, much more confident. The energy she was giving off went from fearful victim female to confident alpha female. For example if a lion was looking for some diner then it would study the herd for the weaker animals not just a limp or a little bit skinny. But the energy they are giving of, if there head is down and little or no eye contact, walking sheepishly this is very submissive, that spells diner to any lioness!

This is no different to a mugger looking for a victim.  if they were lying in wait to attack someone and they had a choice of the Jane before training and Jane after and they didn’t know, The Jane before training was thinking about becoming a victim, seriously lacking confidence in a violent situation so that was the energy she was giving off. You can pick this up from the way some people walk, the victims gate, A bit like a little scared mouse shuffling along and say if an attacker made eye contact with her and she quickly looked away head down he would instantly pick up on this weakness instantly. And you would only react like this if you were fearful.

Once she had trained to a certain extent, reasonably close to the situations she was fearful of, a lot of the fears got answered, she got a much better understanding of not only all of her fears and the situations she could be in not, but learning how to get out of the situations an dangers and how the body reacts to fear, with time that response becomes a trained reaction.

Once she got to the point at the end of the clip, rather than thinking victim and what if this or that happened. All her questions and fears had been answered an tested under pressure, in training. so rather than giving of the victim mentality pre-training. After training she was walking much more upright, head up and confident, she would be switched on looking for danger, she would look any dodgy looking fellow straight in the face and make eye contact with confidence. So a person may look the same but the energy they give off is completely different, and can directly affect an attacker’s choice of victim, DONT BE A VICTIM!

Whats the difference between kipping pull ups and ordinary pull ups?

Ive often heard that kipping is cheating with a pull up,thats because they are infact two completely different exercises, achieving two different objectives.so i depends what your training for

with an ordinary pull up, the idea is to pull yourself up isolating parts of the body to train the specific parts,like a pull down machine,your body in a stable position isolating certain muscle groups, like the back etc, pull ups are an exercise for strength

pull ups clip

now with kipping pull ups they are designed to use the whole body in an explosive flowing movement,strengthening the kinetic chain as a whole,not just isolating certain muscles,this makes a kipping pull up an "explosive move for bodyweight training" 

the kipping pull up

and like with any exercise push yourself to hard and you will injure yourself,ive trained pull ups but never kipping pull ups,I dont think my back could take the whip.

MMA Exercises for the kinetic chain

A punch is a full body movement using your kinetic chain, core and breath linking together to build a wave of energy up from the ground  in an explosive movement, for someone just learning the kinetic chain using heavy weights forces you to use good kinetic movement, because you get to the point at a certain weight where strength alone fails. And there’s another point where you have no choice put to use both kinetics and strength  or you just won’t lift it off the ground .while the press or the swing is a superb exercise for initial explosiveness, it doesn’t teach you a full flowing kinetic movement like a figure of 8.and it can teach you bad habits when you’re looking at punching with the full kinetic chain.

 let me explain, with an exercise like the pivot press and the power clean, once you’ve extended out and finished the movement you relax and it takes much less strength to bring the weight back down and rest it on the floor or your shoulder at which point the movement stops or the flow breaks, it’s like throwing one punch stopping getting back into position and then throwing the same punch again, the other type of kinetic chain exercise teaches you to flow with the kinetic chain, and gives you a better understanding of how to strike and move in combinations, like a jab, cross, hook or moving from a kick to a punch the smoother the chain, the less any power is lost in the movement, the stronger the next strike and so on, this is what makes a full kinetic movement so important.

I have two favourites for understanding the full kinetic flow with two short clips

One is the kettle bell swing, breathing exactly the same way as I punch and driving the hips in the direction I want the bell to go ,to create energy and explosiveness to swing the weight in a continuous flowing movement once I’m in motion at no point do I need to lift or push the weight or stop

and my other favourite is the hammer and tyre for the very same reasons once I’m in motion at no point do I lift the hammer after the first swing I use the energy built up using the first kinetic movement  .by the way you should always keep a straight back where possible(I inherited a curve)

so once you’re in motion your continually flowing in a kinetic flow the stronger the kinetic chain and the core, the lighter and easier the hammer is to continuously swinging because the movement is much more efficient and there’s no energy leaking from weaker positions. Now there is a point in both exercises that I get to relax for a split second after breathing out on release of the kinetic energy built, but I’m not stopping the movement and starting again, I have to continue a full flow so that the chain completes itself. So it’s not like resting a weight back on my shoulder or putting a weight down, I have to be in a good kinetic position to catch weight on the way back down smoothly to swing it back up .these two exercises will make you much more explosive when throwing combinations because you’re not just learning one movement again and again your learning a chain of flowing explosive movements. The other bad habit from the press and clean is straightening out the triceps to finish the punch, I explained this in my last clip 

the kinetic chain and punching for the ufc and mma gloves

I get the feeling some people think I’m just teaching one type of punch? I’m not, the kinetic punching I teach is a Style of punching with the hands designed specifically for MMA Gloves fully utilising the kinetic chain. This punch can’t be thrown in Boxing or Muay Thai gloves, because the thumb position and doesn't allow you to land using the most efficient power line. boxers use swings in allot of punches, it’s normal and can’t be helped when you train in the big gloves and can build some real power. there is a more efficient way to build power is to rotate the body and bring the hand of on a smooth curve so that the forearm is driving every punch in which simply can’t be done in most modern boxing gloves. you would break your thumb trying, well I nearly did the first time I put boxing gloves on and threw a punch, thinking there would be loads of padding and my thumb landed first,!spiked the end of my thumb good style, I started in big gloves but quickly conditioned my hands to hit bare knuckle for self defence originally ,So I also noticed how I couldn’t make a proper fist with my hand in boxing gloves, and my punches weren’t as strong in boxing gloves because I couldn’t land on the strong powerline that I used when bare knuckle.

 So that means unlike boxing were you train in the same hand position that you fight, meaning the same type of glove same fist and thumb position. But when you train in boxing or Thai gloves for mma most of the striking leant for mma is in grained in bag work, pad work and sparing in the bigger gloves, when you fight with the hand in a different position, there’s different angles and more powerful positions available for mma punching. So while the kinetic punch can be up to 40% harder a standard MMA punch, that’s a standard mma jab v a kinetic jab same with a hook or cross etc because its more efficient it also takes much less energy to throw and because of the change in angles and power you can use all your boxing and Muay Thai tactics, but with a much more effective punch suited and designed specifically for mma gloves

This brings me to the second part of the kinetic chain the yin to the yan so to say, what do you need to do to build explosive power on the end of the punch? Because you can build as much speed and power with a punch as you want, but if you’re not doing anything on landing it then it’s only ever going to be a fast heavy push, or a dull thud, and even an eighteen stone guy (114 kilo) who had punched all his life, never had any explosiveness on the end of his punch. To be honest I’ve met allot of people who can put all their weight into a punch and if that’s 18 stone then with that on the end of a dull thud it’s usually plenty. And let me tell you that big guy hit with the most powerful dull thud I had ever felt! Now there’s another type of puncher that’s a real rarity and I’ve met less than one handful on my travels, hold a pad for these guys and you will instantly understand what I mean, no matter how you hold the pad it’s that explosive it nearly always over extends your shoulder, when you decided to met the punch with the pad which is perfectly normal to protected the elbow and shoulder then you hand felt like it had no padding.
One guy who’s number two on my explosive punching list, martin used to thrive in directing his explosive punch down the bone of my forearm deliberately and even though you would be in a strong position, and you didn’t feel it in your shoulder. You could feel what could only be described as a shockwave of pain shooting down your forearm bone marrow and it really hurt when it came out the back of your elbow? However This guy once held a Thai pad for my main self defence teacher (Dennis Jones) throwing a big kinetic hook, he told me it felt like he had snap his forearm bone and commented at the time “any harder and it would have cut my lip” this is where the shockwaves come in and the kinetic chop, there’s 3 shockwaves the light snapping shockwave, the deep snap, and the ripping snap and each one steps up in power but the king is the kinetic chop and it’s a mix of second two shockwaves .
all four of these can be used on the end of most punches,hammer fist or backhand and anybody with any explosive power say a boxer or kickboxer already has started to develop these types of explosiveness just through general training and repetition ,will know what i mean.but it’s when you start to isolate and train the end of the punch, the explosiveness really comes into own. because you've really refined the end, you don’t have to try as hard top build power.shockwaves go hand in hand with kinetic punch.and to be honest the shockwave training made the single biggest difference in mine and all my students explosiveness and precision and it just keeps increasing.

oh and its superb for self defence!!