Sure, there are more basic rules, like finding your proper fighting stance and keeping your hands up, but those concepts are much more easily understood. Actually following through with them, especially keeping ones hands up, is a lot harder, but the mind and body at least tend to grasp them quickly whereas using the whole body for punches is a little more foreign. What's more is that it will feel awkward when you first try it. So if you are throwing a hook for the very first time, it will probably feel more powerful if you throw it with your arms. And for the first couple weeks, it may very well be. But you will ultimately get FAR more power, as well as throw a quicker, more efficient hook, by using your body weight.
This is where the exaggerated learning principal comes in. I'm giving it a fancy name to sound all scientific but it's really pretty simple: I believe that we need to exaggerate the proper body mechanics in order to learn them. Subtlety has not proven to work in a group training environment and it's a lot easier to reel someone in who goes overboard on the use of their whole body into punches than it is to get someone to actually use their body at all. I know this all sounds a little vague so I will give you some examples:
Hooks: These are often the most awkward punches to learn because of balance and weight distribution combined with their east-to-west nature. As mentioned earlier, you might get a little more power swinging your arms on hooks those first couple weeks of training so a brand new boxer may have to give themselves permission to throw weaker hooks for a little bit, until they can learn how to properly use their body. The most important thing being rotating those hips into the punch. This is where I advocate turning your heels out entirely, staying on the ball of your foot ("squashing the bug", "putting out the cigarette", etc.), and pointing your toe in the direction of the hook. I know some trainers who tell you that it is not critical to turn the heel (especially kickboxers who will find this harder to follow kicks with) but these are people who have mastered the rotation component and shifting their body weight. 99.9% of new boxers cannot do this and thus, it is essential to turn the heel entirely - to teach your body how to rotate into the hook and master it - before you can think about not turning your heel out. This is where I would advocate over-exaggerating the motion. Turn either heel 90 degrees and so that the toe is pointing in the direction of your punch
But turning on it's own is not enough. The weight must be transferred from the front foot to the back foot. So if I'm throwing a left hook, my left heel must turn out where my right heel must go down to absorb the weight and keep me on balance. There is a common problem where people stand up too tall into their punches, putting them off balance and losing power. And it makes sense if we are telling them to stay on their toes. Unconsciously or not, many folks tend to straighten their whole leg when coming up on their toes. To combat this, I advocate making a concentrated effort to drop your weight down into a hook, maintain a bend in both knees and imagine you are screwing the ball of your foot into the ground, keeping that heel as low as possible but still not touching. Once again, exaggerate the weight drop a little to train your body to stay low.
Eventually, adding an arm-swinging component to hooks will increase your power, particularly if your swing trails the hip rotation by microseconds, creating the whipping effect, but I do not want someone brand new focusing on this UNTIL they learn how to properly rotate with their lower body.
Uppercuts: What hip rotation is to hook punches, leg-drive is to uppercuts. Now matter how strong your arms are, your legs are always going to be stronger. Just like on hooks, it might feel more natural to swing your arm into a uppercut. But if you can learn how to use your legs, you not only will get significantly more power from them but you won't need to drop your hand and expose your face when doing so. You'll see lots of professional fighters drop their hands but you will also see plenty of them get hit while dropping their hands. If you want to look at anybody as a model for uppercut technique and power, look no further than Mike Tyson. He used his legs, hips, and back so explosively, it's hard to imagine any uppercut being more powerful without sacrificing his own safety. I also often tell people that even if you don't want to fight or care about Iron Mike, you are going to get a far better workout throwing uppercuts like him than throwing slower, weaker bowling ball-style uppercuts with just your arms.
So the over-exaggeration comes from the legs. The very first thing that needs to happen is a dip in the knees. A quick drop to load your legs and then, like a spring, a snap upward to drive the punch to its target. Drop, load, and lift! The concept of dropping down isn't as hard to teach but the lifting up and transferring that leg drive into the punch is a little bit tougher. Takes practice. And also like the hooks, I want people to learn how to throw uppercuts almost entirely with their body, adding maybe 25-30% arm extension at the end, once the leg-drive is complete. There really is no reason at all to drop your hands. All dropping should be done with the legs. Later on, we can add a little more arm movement in but not until you have mastered the leg drive, then the hip twist, then the back arch to generate maximum power into the uppercut without dropping hands. That part is harder to learn for sure, yet still the foundation we must build from.
Especially when fighting in the ring, but even just with fitness training, there will be times to cut corners. Maybe it's for speed, maybe it's to set something else up, maybe it has to do with positioning. Or you may likely not need a particularly exaggerated motion. When we are learning though, I believe exaggeration in the specific and important case of using your body to throw punches will not only give you better technique and power but also a better understanding of the why behind punches so that when you do cut corners, you are doing so in the most efficient way possible and preserving as much of the original spirit behind the punch as possible. Sounds scientific again, I guess. Hit me up with any questions or if a video breakdown might help.
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