What are the advantages of using a vertical fist for punching?

Question

There is vertical fist punch in Hapkido as well as some Chinese martial arts and in older styles of boxing, but I see it a lot less in modern fighting and sparring.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a vertical fist (where the wrist never parallels the ground) versus a straight punch (which turns over)? Where would one choose to use one over the other in an actual fight?

Answer 1

I have done some Wing Chun; I do love the vertical punch - it's very fast, powerful and precise

The vertical punch is the most basic and fundamental in Wing Chun and is usually thrown with the elbow down and in front of the body.

Wing Chun favors the vertical punch for several reasons:

• Directness. The punch is not "loaded" by pulling the elbow behind the body. The punch travels straight towards the target from the guard position (hands are held in front of the chest).
• Protection. The elbow is kept low to cover the front midsection of the body. It is more difficult for an opponent to execute an elbow lock/break when the elbow occupies this position. This aids in generating power by use of the entire body structure rather than only the arm to strike. Also with the elbow down, it offers less opening for the body to be attacked while the forearm and punch intercept space towards the head and upper body.
• Strength and Impact. Wing Chun practitioners believe that because the elbow is behind the fist during the strike, it is thereby supported by the strength of the entire body rather than just a swinging fist, and therefore has more impact. A common analogy is a baseball bat being swung at someone's head (a round-house punch), as opposed to the butt end of the bat being thrust forward into the opponent's face (wing chun punch), which would cause far more damage than a glancing hit and is not as easy to evade. Many skilled practitioners pride themselves on being able to generate "short power" or large amount of power in a short space. A common demonstration of this is the "one-inch punch", a punch that starts only an inch away from the target yet delivers an explosive amount of force.
• Alignment & Structure. Because of Wing Chun's usage of stance, the vertical punch is thus more suitable. The limb directly in front of the chest, elbow down, vertical nature of the punch allows a practitioner to absorb the rebound of the punch by directing it through the elbows and into the stance. This is a desirable trait to a Wing Chun practitioner because it promotes use of the entire body structure to generate power. Whereas, the rebound of a horizontal punch uses only the arm to strike. In this elbow-out position the hinge-structure directs force outwards along the limb producing torque in the puncher's body.

When executing the punch, you must relax and not use your shoulders. If your shoulders gets tired from using the punch, you did something wrong. The punch comes from the body and not the arm.

The punches may be thrown in quick succession in a "straight blast" or "chain punching". When executed correctly, it can be used as a disorienting finisher.

Answer 2

Your mileage may vary, but generally, the choice of fist position has more to do with the ergonomics of the punch.

The distance and the height of the target and the angle of the punch seem to be the major aspects that contribute to the choice of the fist position.

When I punch above the chest height I usually prefer either open palm (I am a taijiquan practitioner) or horizontal fist position. Below the solar plexus I definitely prefer vertical fist position. Lower than dantien, usually means that the fist turns back horizontal.

Also the angle of the punch, the distance to the target and use of boxing gloves (or not) does influence it.

To me it has more to do with how the energy of my punch travels from the source of the punch through the structure of my body in to the target.

Answer 3

Isshinryu karate emphasizes the use of the vertical fist punch; it is a trademark of the style. Here is my perspective as an ex-Isshinryu practitioner who now (occasionally) trains boxing and muay Thai for striking.

Purported Benefits

The spiel I gave when I taught Isshinryu was as follows: the vertical fist is part of a rising punch that:

• fits into the upside-down V shape of the sternum
• protects the wrist as the punch does so,
• allows the top two knuckles (of the forefinger and middle finger) to make contact instead of other, weaker knuckles, and
• is supposedly faster than a corkscrew punch

I have also heard other Isshinryu practitioners claim that such a hand position more efficiently transmits force to the fist.

Why It's Irrelevant for Most Practitioners

If one is training to get proficient in hitting people, the overriding concern one should have is achieving fluency in what Matt Thornton calls the "delivery system" of striking. Or as Daisetsu Suzuki put it:

Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious.

This means that we should evaluate training systems not by which one has a better checklist of reasons why they use a certain fist alignment (a comparison in which Isshinryu might win), but rather which one more consistently produces proficient strikers (a comparison in which boxing and kickboxing would win).

When choosing a style, it is dramatically more important to hit pads, work with the heavy bag, and spar with hard contact in a permissive ruleset than to worry about vertical versus horizontal fists. Avoid premature optimization--vertical versus non-vertical punches should be one of the last things to worry about in one's training. If a student was executing horizontally-oriented body punches, I wouldn't say that switching to a vertical fist was at all a priority.

That said, boxing does align the knuckles vertically during some punches--a lead hook comes to mind--but there is much less emphasis on this being a different kind of fist or a different style of punch.

Evaluation With These Considerations in Mind

I don't mind the straight vertical-fist punch for strikes to the body, but I don't see its usefulness for striking the head, and I don't think it's really that different from turning the fist over.

I'm no longer convinced by the idea that the vertical fist makes much of a difference for wrist stability; I would argue that if that is a concern for a trainee, that person should get stronger and hit the heavy bag very carefully and more frequently. I'm also not convinced that "fitting into the V of the sternum" matters very much. The xiphoid process might be somewhat easier to hit, but knocking the wind out of people seems more reliant on footwork, tactics, accuracy, and speed than on how the fist is positioned.

I flat out don't believe that the vertical fist is faster than other punches, or that one can't hit with the correct top two knuckles using non-vertical punches, or that it transmits force more efficiently than non-vertical fist positions. I just don't see any credible evidence for these claims, though I mention them because I've heard them.