Question 118: Horizontal v. Vertical fist

Reply

Thank you for your well thought out reply to my article. I have to decipher most emails to figure out what the writer is even talking about.

While there are certainly a few vertical punch proponents around today, they are far outnumbered by the horizontal punchers. Just because something is old or different does not make it the best thing to do. I once had a poll on my TKDTutor web site that asked which type of punching, vertical or horizontal, readers used, and the horizontal punchers won 90% to 10% (but then most of the web site viewers were probably Taekwondo practitioners).

The article already describes the vertical punch as it was used in the early years of boxing, but I added links to the two references you provided.

As explained in the article, horizontal punching is natural to humans. If told to hold their arms up in front of their bodies, most people will hold their arms up with their hands in a horizontal position; this is the natural position. It takes conscious thought and physical effort to rotate the hands and hold them in a vertical position.