“Your comment about having my muscles telegraph the movement reminded me of this video of Michael Jai-White extolling the virtues of a traditional karate punch—something that doesn't happen much these days.

He seems to be suggesting that using the hips and shoulder to generate more power leads to telegraphing and even a muscular guy like him manages to throw punches that Kimbo Slice doesn't see coming.”

Dave, telegraphing stick stokes and punches includes a lot of nuance with each range. The one area that plagues many good athletes is their muscularity.

With a weapon big lats will prevent one from pulling the elbow back to refuse the hand.

Additionally, on a heavily muscled man the hand hangs farther away from the body, and is more easily noticed by the opponent. The deception of the hand in both sports has to do with keeping the hand within the visual field of the body, like keeping your troops positioned on the ‘military crest’ of a hill [at the base of the final incline] as opposed to the actual crest where they would be silhouetted against the sky.

The most basic problem with either punching or stroking faced by strong men is their temptation to engage their muscles consciously, instead of just relaxing, which often results in reaching hooks and reaching forehands.

One tip for training a muscular stick fighter is to have him focus on backhands more than forehands.

As to the film clip below: This brief coaching session was beautiful.

When he throws the rear hand and discusses the body's 'plane,' Michael is discussing the use of the visual field of the body to cloak the eye's perception of the hand motion.

In the first double jab demonstration, when Kimbo read his fast movement, that was his fighter's eye detecting the shoulder dip as a fighter consciously relaxes his shoulder to uncork a punch that will not suffer from the shoulder resisting the transfer of force from the floor to the fist. In boxing, as with stick fighting, you want the shoulder to be pre-relaxed, so that no visual cue will be broadcast on the opponent's visual monitor before the strike is launched.

The overall point behind Michael's demo is that relaxation is the key combative discipline. You can hear Kimbo echoing that sentiment in those words, which have obviously been drilled into him by past trainers.

Thanks for the clip, Dave.