Now that you have developed the ability to walk up to a wall and touch it, knowing that it is within reach, it is time to know if you are within range to punch through the target rather than at it.

Find your range.

Remain flat footed as you touch the wall with the pads of your finger tips.

Flex your rear calf muscle, raising your heel, and pushing your weight forward. Your fingers will slide up the wall until your hand flattens out and the heel of your palm presses into it. Push with the calf muscle through the wall, until isometric strain can be felt in the tricep tendon behind the elbow. Repeating this will help you develop the muscle and tendon strength and range to withstand the shock of your punch into a swinging heavy bag of advancing opponent.

Make the motion mildly ballistic, hitting the wall with the palm of the cupped hand [not with a karate palm strike claw] learning how to transfer that lower leg flexion into a short range impact. Thump that wall. Gradually thump it harder, quicker, with a sharp hiss of exhalation to help release your energy.

Keep the bend in your lead knee consistent. [We will play with this later on the lunge slide. For now the lunge weight transfer is best left in your future.]

I once fought a Greek rules bout against a six-foot one-inch, 251 pound taekwondo fighter named Big Don. He lunged at me with a thrusting jab as I did the rock slide. When he ran into my glove with his chin I thought my arm would break as it shivered from the impact which drove me back on my heel. Had my arm been locked out instead of slightly bent it would have been injured. As it was he nearly blew out my tricep. Fortunately, he did not weigh 252! and went down, out cold, like he had run into a fence post. That story illustrates the strength of the rock slide and its limitation as an isolated technique, as well as the risk of the lunge.

Rock off of your heel into the target as your hand slides up the wall.

Rock in, and rock back, which can have defense applications later on.

Now rock off your heel and turn your open cupped hand at 45 degrees inward on the thumb side, and practice sliding to the outside, letting your lead foot pivot on the heel as you press with your hand and your rear foot drags on an equidistant arc, keeping the same alignment with the target, your lead foot not being between the rear foot and the target, but nearly so.

You are learning to cut the angle with the jab, learning the feel after it lands. The best example of this technique was Roy Jones Junior versus John Ruiz.

Now rock into the target, turning your fingers inward at 90 degrees and engage your shoulder. Go slow because you could blow your tricep tendon or shoulder out. This should be a relaxed, gradually isometric.

Now combine your walk up touch with the rock slide.

In particular, use this as a post exercise on a banister, vertical beam, wall corner, doorframe, pole or fence post, learning how to press through with your palm and angle around.

This is still the pre-punch conditioning phase of learning the jab.

This is also a large portion of your self-defense suite. In criminal encounters and drunken attacks on your person, you do not, as a trained boxer, want to immediately go to the fist. You either want to set them up for a clean KO, making certain you are not clinched before your throw, or you want to limit the violence.

Look closely at how Roy cuts the angles to his left on Ruiz as he hits him with the jab, and note that it is the sneaky jab that he throws, not the power jab with the engaged shoulder and turned down palm.

Ruiz has the right idea going to the body. Note that the man jabbing the body controls the action in this catch weight fight. With Jones, his lead foot action is often indistinguishable from jab, to hook, to uppercut. If you are Jones, and you are still in your prime, you can cut angles with your lead foot with these brazen power punches. If you are a normal human, use this foot action with the jab. In any case, for your rock slide training, practice cutting the angle with the foot action used by Roy for all of his lead hand punches under your jab.

Learn to hook later.

If you are a big dude, you can do no worse than listening to George.