Does strength really significantly increase punch force?

No, I didn't. There are other exercises that will do the job better, without stressing the shoulder joints as much, and without ingraining dysfunctional sacpular rhythms.

No because of weigth. If you put a power lifter and a kickboxing master( a girl one) that weights the same tham the power lifter, the girl WILL HIT HARDER. Weight does give you an adventage, thats why there are weight classes in boxing. If you are a competitive athlete you need every adventage thats why boxers train upper body.
In my dojo there are girls that can knock me out , and i do more pushups (and bench more) than them so i belive technic is more important

High weight Low rep can increase punching force, as well as explosive power training.

Squatting 405 dont mean you can punch hard to be perfectly honest. Think most who have been in alot of fights can attest to meeting big guys who hit like a wet mop
Had a guy I was scared of back in the day, big guy(farmer). He surprised me at a party once and nailed me beside my left eye. Broke my glasses ofc, but beyond that my only thought was"thats it?". Its not me being a "tough" guy, just the fact that he had no clue how to actually punch properly.

To quote Bruce Lee upon being asked about a bodybuilders physique: Yeah, he is big, but is he powerful? Can he use that muscle efficiently?

There is alot of technique behind a strong punch, and mastering the punch chain(feet,hips,shoulders) means you can actually put your strength behind it. Not to mention breathing technique,balance etc etc.

Best way to get a strong punch is training training and more training. Lift weights on the side, so when the punch technique is engraved in muscle memory, the body has more power to transfer to your fist

Lifting increased my punching and kicking power a lot. I was surprised lol.

I don't believe I ever said squatting 405 lbs would make a world class punch.  But the 270 lbs man who can squat 405 lbs is definitely going to hit harder then a lot of people (on average).  I do believe I mentioned heavy bag training and technique rules over heavy lifting.

The size and development of a muscle has little to no correlation to its "flexibility" which is basically a junk term anyway.

This is a complex topic that people seem to want to distill down to nothing.

Force= Mass x Acceleration

Power= Work divided by time

Work= Force x Distance

Yes, great to have established the physics formulas. But in athletics there is a complex relationship of all different factors which are only distilled down to simplify into strength, technique, power. The problem is that increasing one often, but not inherently, increases the potential at minimum for the others.

Up to a point increasing those lifts would absolutely increase the force production and thusly power of a punch even if you kept technique exactly the same. The problem is that 1 those lifts only occur in the saggital plane (a punching motion occurs in all planes of motion with an emphasis on the transverse or "rotational" plane). This neurally limits and in some cases muscularly (neurally-your body doesn't make the connection that this force will be transferred into another plane of motion, muscularly-you leave out muscles and stabilizers of the other plane(s) of motion) the transferability of your strength gains.

I say "up to a point increasing those lifts" because if you bench 400, squat 500 and deadlift 450 then doubling those will NOT do much for your punch. There comes a point where those lifts become ALL about force production and acceleration drops quite a bit, not to mention they become niches and less and less "general."

But if you bench 200, squat 250 and deadlift 225 and double those lifts while doing rotational medicine ball throws? Your punching power is going to go up. Rotational medicine ball throws fill that gap of transferring the force, increasing rate of force development, etc.

Just a mention as well that many coaches talk about what is missing in fighter's programs isn't conditioning or power, but that they don't do simple limit strength work, or too much work in the gym. The answer I often hear? Simple, big, lifts.                                                                            

1) My equations are right for the most part? They're the most common physics equations there are. They're absolutely correct and standard.

2) Also I've emboldened what you said I didn't take into account, and where I overtly explained and agreed.

3) A boxing forum a reputable source does not make. In reference to the post you learned all of this from

"The more you Lift weights also decreases flexibility or overlapping in your thick and thin myofilaments(microscopic muscle, where all the cool stuff goes down, look up sarcomere). More overlapping of these filaments makes you stronger hence which is why flexibility=strength. Boxers also have more recruited fast-twitch muscle fibers. Opposite being slow twitch fibers which are stronger due to higher amounts of mitochondria and ATP. But thats where some physics come in."

Let's go point by point on where this post misses the mark, oversimplifies and gets it wrong.

-Point 1=Lifting weights decreases flexibility due to overlapping of filaments and the overlapping of filaments is what makes you stronger.  

Strength increases due to a number of factors. Not the least of which is the central nervous system adapting, as far as what occurs in the muscles themselves, functional adaptations occur in the structures of the muscle primarily in response to the eccentric portion of the lift, and by all means this isn't directly related to strength.  There is eccentric strength particularly which is your ability to absorb force (the more force you can absorb the more you can produce) but again there are structural adaptations but this is more to survive the ordeal of heavy lifting than to actually produce it. They're interrelated, but the post suggest the "filaments" and their overlap is the primary reason you gain strength. Which..isn't true.

Also this is a GROSS oversimplification of flexibility and throwing in the term sacromeres doesn't somehow explain or justify things. Flexibility again is highly relative to the nervous system. Literal tissue length and tissue ROM in movement are very different. Otherwise PNF Stretching would never work...would it? Also weightlifting can serve to correct and develop the strength of different muscles in relationship to each other, which can dramatically increase flexibility. Example? If you have an anterior pelvic tilt your hip flexors will be short and your glutes and hamstrings weak. If you strengthen your hamstrings and glutes your hip flexors can "magically" gain "flexibility" etc. In relation to his "overlapping fibers decrease flexibility" go right ahead and look up foam rolling and soft tissue work. Even IF lifting inherently overlaps, criss crosses and scars our muscles (which it doesn't necessarily) you can fix that.

-Point 2= Flexibility=strength

What? Well if he's talking about stretch-reflex okay. If he's talking about tissue length...perhaps? Strength can be effected by the length of different tissues but this is not what strength is equivalent to. Also this seems to contradict what he just said.

-Point 3=Boxers have more recruited fast twitch muscle fibers

...well maybe? Probably if they did STRENGTH work. If they didn't, I really doubt it. Also more in relation to who? Likely boxers actually have less recruited fast twitch because they are in a sense truly endurance athletes. This probably switches their fiber type even if they would be fast twitch dominant to a more of mixed-fiber type.

-Point 4=Opposite are slow twitch which are stronger

Slow twitch fibers are weaker. Slow twitch fibers fatigue much less quickly, BUT they lack the force potential of fast twitch fibers. I'll ignore his explanation of why fibers are stronger and weaker since he uses energy systems like buzz words and has mistaken and simplified fiber types so much so already.

" I'm not saying lifting weights is bad, bcuz it is really essential, just limit the amount of weight, increase reps, and stretch. Lifting with bungees and doing body weight exercises won't have as much as an effect on your flexibility and some ways will increase it. Thats the best I can pull out of my ass without referencing my old notes and texts, hope I helped. "

-Point 5=Less weight, more reps and stretch

Non-specific, more reps and less weight has a greater chance of causing those "filament" adaptations he talked about.

-Point 6=Bodyweight and bungees will not effect flexibility, will some ways increase it

This is just fundamentally wrong. Also it has no relation to the actual amount of resistance. So chin ups which can be very high weight and low reps is fine BUT we shouldn't do low reps and high weight, BUT it's okay because it's bodyweight and won't effect flexibility? I think not. Resistance bands I don't even see the relation in any form to how that has to do with this.

-Point 7= THAT'S THE BEST I CAN PULL OUT OF MY ASS

So...it has no basis. It's just pulled from the air.


I really wouldn't have gone through all that but it's that kind of "magical thinking" and bro-science that causes so many problems. Also many of his points are commonly confused things and oversimplifications. I hope at least some of you will read through and pay some attention to things that are so often said but with little basis and accepted as fact but are false.