How many boxers do Tai-Chi body mechanics every practice.

Before I go onto how boxers generally utilize this skill, I’ll do an overview of peng/elasticity.

I’ve made blog posts about Peng before, about the natural elasticity in the body that internal martial arts practitioners use as one of their primary skills and characteristics. It’s what they use to cause people to go flying with a bouncing expression of force, particularly in Chinese martial arts. If one observes carefully, the sensation is that of a person launched from a spring. It’s obvious what it is.

Many also use it to generate power in punching, though usually the punch is also well…kind of a shove more than something that would knock you out. It’s useful however, as it steals balance which makes it easy to hit someone with boxing/conventional strikes or knocks them down to control or stomp.

Steven Morris doesn’t call it Peng and probably would be upset I’m even comparing what he does to traditional martial arts, but he refers to this power as well, this elastic spring like quality.

But unlike giving the guy an impressive shove, he uses it to generate powers in hitting, but his application of peng is using it to create whips and flurys instead of the off balance or pushing nature seen in internal martial arts.

This is not unique to Morris however, other strikers will use a similar ‘whip’ of the body to create these strikes by locking and springing the tendons to punch or kick, though MOrris is one of the few to use it as a whole body thing, from root to branhc.

How boxers consistently use Peng.

But I have had only a two people relate this natural elasticity in a way that combines striking and foot work.

Most people use it to shove or push, to strike and take balance, or to create flurys.

But how many use it to break distance and explode? How many use it to change direction?

My Taiji teacher in particular had a background in karate and often sparred full contact, and he often noticed a sink and rise of the knee would charge the tendons in his leg(Ankle and achielles in particular) and he would explode forward breaking distance to land a strike, and expanding on said strike for more power or off balancing.

Thing is though, he did it through a turning or a step back to charge it. It was thinking about his movement I realized that boxers and SOME point karateka utilize through a different method of charging the tendons of the legs to create movement and power.

They do it by locking the ankle or even whole leg in place, then landing on it by shifting weight one side or the other, the leg constantly springing from one. The explanation for this is momentum, the fighter is constantly in motion and therefore able to act faster and react faster. But many trainers don’t mention that this is only on small reason it works, it also bio mechanically makes you explode without much muscular effort. If this is done right, cardio should only be partially strained from the pendulum, and the muscles of your leg not at all.

Personally I could not do it the way my taiji teacher does, by compressing the ankle by a backwards step and exploding forward. But I noticed I could do it with a side to side motion. I can’t cover as much ground as him to explode forward, but it’s more than a muscular motion, and my ability to move to the side is better then if i drop backwards.

Either way, it doesn’t matter how you do it, just that you do it. Different ways of doing this help your fighting in different ways. Mine makes me cover ground laterally, the way my taiji teacher does it covers ground forward/breaking distance.

It was first exposed to me as a distance breaker.

But while it was introduced as a way to break distance and move explosively, it does much more than that, and boxers once again use it much more than the pendulum bounce.

Not only is good old crazy Mike Tyson slipping punches, but his movement is charging a spring into each of his leg, and thus making his punches that much more damaging. I alluded before many martial artists use elasticity to enhance strikes, but this one kind of puts it together with movement of the feet using the springs as a platform on the ground.

Tyson isn’t just shoving a person off balance with a strike or push, nor is he using small whips to create flurry’s.

He’s creating

Karate people do it less as a pendulum bouncing from foot to food, and more as a ‘bounce’.

But to quote Jesse Enkamp, you don’t jump up and up like most martial arts do, but continuous bounces down, down down. I usually enjoy Jesse’s videos, but I rarely get better principles or technique’s, but this video is actually pretty good at teaching a variation of peng and elasticity for movement.

If you can’t or don’t want to use the swinging of the head to spring the leg side to side like Tyson…

Or if you don’t want to bounce from one leg or the other like the lady boxer in the gif above…

You can simply stand in one place and drop down down down as Jesse shows, and then let that spring propel you forward or add edge to your strikes. Point karate has done some damage to karate as an art, but I take this application of Peng, of elasticity to be a plus.

And the thing is, depending on your talent, ability and method of movement, you can use Peng/Pendulum to charge your body in countless ways.

What I outlined above isn’t the only methods to recruit elasticity in your footwork. It’s just the most common.

Some of the best of all time did their own thing with the concept.

Ali, Domnick Cruz, Ali again and Willie Pep.

Now in my opinion Taiji and internal arts are some of the best ways to use the bodies natural elasticity in combat. My taiji teacher learned to move the legs and whole body through taiji, and so has my uechi-ryu teacher.

But most don’t really teach this at all. They may imitate it, but don’t recruit the right body mechanics.

But the fact is, most Taiji, Hsing I, Pa kua and other internal martial arts types don’t use it like that, it’s generally either piece meal or done as pushes and off balances.

But boxing specifically is one of the few arts that actually teachers how to use this in a holistic method of movement and striking within their art. The pendulum tends to be hammered in, and if a boxer is doing it wrong, it becomes very obvious very quickly to the coach since they can’t attach any tools to the movement.

Hell to be fair, I don’t think even most boxers even realize what they are doing, they just do it.