bench press or bicep curls but it is safe to say he is pretty strong. So what would happen if he, or anyone with super strength, punched you in the face? Your head would literally explode, right? Well, based solely on super strength, nothing very different than being punched by another person of the same size/mass. I am not kidding either. Read on, true believers!
There are a lot of factors that go into punching hard but physical strength alone is far less significant. As we know, Force = Mass x Acceleration. Yes, we do use physical strength to produce that acceleration but it requires a different kind of strength than we use to lift things and pull things. The person who holds the squat world record cannot jump super high. It uses the same muscles, involves pushing off the ground, but requires two totally different types of muscle fibers.
Or you can think of it like being hit by a car. Even if the largest, heaviest vehicle were to run into you at 1 mph. it would push you for sure but you would not be hurt. Even at 5 or 10 mph, the result would be a strong push not much damage from the impact itself. As the car starts to go faster, the impact increases exponentially. A punch is really the same thing. You could simply extend your hand and won't create power or hurt anybody, no matter how strong you are, unless your fist is traveling fast when it lands.
And yes, I know Superman is very fast, too. Google also says that nowadays, he can move faster than the speed of light. And it doesn't seem to take him long to get up to that speed. So going back to the original question, a punch from Superman would kill you but not because of his super strength. It would be his speed/acceleration that did it. So if you are ever watching a movie where someone with super strength punches someone else and they go flying or they punch a wall, you can be a nerd and say that is not accurate if the punch travels at normal speed because strength on its own means nothing. A punch from Superman would be imperceptible. You'd never see it and the result would be an instantaneous explosion.
Then there are other factors still that make a punch powerful. Skeletal alignment is something I think gets overlooked (which is probably why I talk about it a lot). Not just because our bones are strong but because we are able to put our center of mass more properly. For example, if you were to throw a cross and position and time it so that your fist, wrist, elbow, shoulder, right hip and knee were all in perfect alignment, your cross is going to be a lot more powerful than if your right elbow is away from your body and not in alignment with the shoulder. The momentum from your center-of-mass gets lost the further your hand drifts away from it. This is another case where classic strength lifts differ from punches. If you were going to do a push up or bench press, you would want your elbows away from the body and out to the side but it is considerably weaker to throw punches like this.
There is also timing and accuracy too. Does the punch land at the optimal time and optimal place? Sometimes you will see knockouts or knockouts that look almost fake. Ali-Liston 2 is a classic example. People thought (and still think) that it was fixed and Liston took a dive. But it is very possible that punch hurt him badly, despite looking off-balance and not particularly powerful, because the placement and timing were perfect. If someone moves into a punch, it is going to multiply its effect significantly, as does them not seeing the punch coming at all. Even when someone gets hit flush, they can withstand better just by knowing that it is coming. Our body does a lot of unconscious things to prepare for impact but if you never see the punch, it doesn't need to be that solid of a shot to finish the fight.
But if all these things are true, why was someone like George Foreman a power puncher, even in his 40s? His strikes were never particularly quick or explosive. What he lacked in the acceleration part of the equation, he made up for in mass. And mass does make a difference, which is why they have weight classes in boxing. It's not just your overall body weight though, it is also how you use that mass. George was able to shift his weight perfectly into his punches, as I touched on when I discussed skeletal alignment above. So well-thrown mass with a smaller acceleration modifier can do plenty of damage but if you can, do both! Will you be able to hit as hard as Superman? Maybe not, but definitely harder than any actor who plays Superman, or even just the strongest human on this planet.
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