Exercise Scientist Critiques the Strongest Puncher in History: Francis Ngannou
In a Nutshell
Francis Ngannou holds the all-time record for the hardest punch ever measured at 129,000 units, but his limited gas tank remains his main vulnerability. His training focuses on heavy compound lifts like weighted dips, rear-foot elevated lunges, and behind-the-neck push presses to build power and strength, plus the assault air bike for sport-specific conditioning. Punching power originates from the ground up through the kinetic chain—calves, quads, glutes, then rotating torso into the strike—making full-range compound movements the most effective training approach.
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Francis demonstrated a punching power just over 129,000 units. This is the highest recording ever, not only at the Performance Institute, but around the world. Previous record of 114,000 was demonstrated by kickboxer Tyrone Spong. As a professional athlete who has had his recording done on a machine for punching power standardized in good conditions, Francis has the strongest punch of all time.
Dr. Mike is a long time professor of exercise and sports science, a competitive bodybuilder, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu grappler, and once got punched in the face in a street fight. Francis Ngannou has been the UFC super heavyweight champion of the world and holds the record for the strongest punch of all time.
The idea that punching power can be measured makes subjective stuff really objective. Guys have been obsessed with who can punch the hardest for forever, but machines to measure it have been available for some time.
There are asymmetric advantages and disadvantages depending on weight class. Lighter fighters don't have to support as much weight and muscle mass, and their power to weight ratio, especially repeat power weight ratio, is way better. Lighter fighters can put on a pace of both offense and defense that is categorically higher than what super heavyweights could do.
However, lighter fighters that are smaller don't have as much absolute punching force. Skull size, skull thickness, and head size doesn't scale completely with body weight. Lighter fighters are not much harder to knock out compared to heavier fighters, but they hit much less hard. Two very light fighters can trade heavy on the chin, on the jaw, on the money contact blows, and shrug them off. Ultra heavyweights, especially elite punchers like Francis Ngannou, one glancing blow can end the entire fight, which changes the dynamics of the fight significantly.
Francis Ngannou's Achilles heel during his career was that his gas tank wasn't incredible. The people that have beaten Francis Ngannou did two things: their strike defense was priority number one, and they wore him down until he got gassed out. At some point, you're so tired you can't even throw your big punch anymore because you've lost all the energy with which to do that.
If he gets to you early and manages to connect, you Jenga block fall apart
Element makes drinks and little awesome pouches that have every single one of the electrolytes your body needs to rehydrate properly. Dump the electrolyte powder in a little bit of water, drink it with and after training, and it rehydrates you to a phenomenal extent.
Francis has chains for added weight because when you're 6'4" and 257 lbs, you need more weight. He's training in sets of five to 10 repetitions to put on the best combination of size and strength for MMA. He's doing really deep dips, which maximizes hypertrophy for the chest, shoulders, and triceps. Full range of motion with control.
As complex as training for combat sport in the weight room ever needs to become. You put some weight on your body or on the bar. You do sets of three to six, nine through a full range of motion on compound, basic, gnarly, mean exercises. Presses, dips, squats, pull-ups, like that. And you become big and strong.
Most of the stuff they're doing is not fancy stuff. It's just weighted bodyweight movements, barbell movements, machine movements, dumbbell movements. Not a lot of Bosu ball nonsense. That's how you get to maximizing your performance.
Francis has been working a lot with the assault air bike as one of his master tools for conditioning. The Assault Bike is an unbelievable form of cardio specifically for combat sport because combat sport is not a continuous form of exertion - it is cyclical. You put a crazy amount of output for usually 10 to 30 seconds, then back down for 10 to 30, then back up.
The Assault Bike trains exactly this cyclical pattern. It has zero impact, so it doesn't beat up your joints at all. The downside is that it is brutal and whole body - your legs, back, chest, and arms are all working. It upgrades your total metabolic ability for short-term power endurance.
Francis is doing rear foot elevated lunges, also known as Bulgarian squats. This is a great exercise for bigger quads and bigger glutes. The glutes have a lot to do with fighting because when you're punching properly, especially a cross, you're rotating your body and your fist starts from really far away from the opponent. A crap load of the energy that ends up at the tip of your fist starts from your lower body.
The first muscles involved in a punch are actually your calves because they push you from the ground. That energy travels from your calves through and is added with energy from your quads, major energy is added by the glutes, and then that transfers over into energy added for the front delts, the triceps, and the pecs, including the rotational musculature of your spine.
Francis is doing a behind the neck push press. This strengthens your pushing muscle ability - front delts and triceps, which hugely transfers to punching ability. It also works on your momentum transfer so that you can develop a crazy amount of total body power.
The way punching works is it starts from your legs and transfers over into your upper body. The push press does exactly the same thing. Having a strong upper body is good, but if you have a strong lower body as well and an ability and practice to transfer lower body power into upper body power, you literally add the two together.
Dr. Mike struggles to understand why people do kettlebell swings and can't make it make sense. He questions what a kettlebell swing is for that a weightlifting movement or a stiff leg deadlift couldn't do way better.
Push-ups on the medicine ball have a very small range of motion - they're partials. They don't work as well as full range to develop strength and size. You could just put your hands on the ground and it would be better. They also destabilize and that actually reduces your peak power output, peak force output and makes you less good at the thing.
If Francis is doing goblet squats as a cardio circuit as part of full body, maybe that's cool. But if you're looking to get strength and size, 80 lb is not enough for someone 6 ft 4, 257 lb. The hardest part about this exercise is holding it out in front of you.
Tire slams train the anterior chain - quads, hip flexors, abs, and lats. These muscles allow you to go from an extended position to a curled position really quick. These are great for snap downs and for a ton of elbow down power. It trains high force production and because you're trying to hit the tire as much as possible, it trains power - force multiplied by speed.
You have to have what's called a maximal intent to move. You have to be doing this exercise trying to destroy that tire because some athletes are tired after practice. They're just kind of going through the motions. You go through the motions on a power exercise it does basically nothing for you.
When Francis really needs to eat clean during training camp, the best thing he can do is have a chef. When he's not in training camp, what he likes the most would be pancakes. Pancakes are totally fine in the diet - it just depends on what they're made of and how you prepare them.
The number one determining factor on pancakes and whether they're healthy or not is going to be how you prepare them, both batter and how you actually fry them. If your batter doesn't have a load of fat in it, that's a good start. If you don't fry them in a gazillion pounds of butter and oil, that also helps. Pancakes can be an amazing source of carbohydrates, especially if they're whole grain pancakes.
If you have a lot of carbs in your diet, you can eat regular syrup. Regular syrup constitutes like 50 g of carbs and it's not much. Sugar-free syrup tastes just fine once you get used to it and it has like the 10th of the calories of regular syrup.
Francis grew up having a lot of respect with food since they didn't have food. He appreciates every type of food and doesn't waste food at all. People who grow up in modern free countries have no idea what the rest of the world looks like.
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