Alignment and Tactical Principles - Effective One Inch Punch.

There is some speculation regarding the 'One Inch Punch' that was made famous by Bruce Lee in a demonstration at a tournament.
There is quite a lot of mysticism surrounding much of the arts and, unfortunately, that may be because of the language barrier, someone does not know how to explain something, or someone simply does not know how to do something properly.

There is a difference between hitting and hitting hard, the difference lay in mechanics. Tyson is not just a hard hitter, he maintains perfect alignment in each punch in order to hit effectively and, thus, really really friggin' hard.
In Okinawan systems we call this Atifa or alignment and the final transference happens at the end with a quick tension which, in Okinawan systems, is called Chinkuchi.
Another part of this is focused in, not just the hips, but the entire core, which can be termed Gamaku, although Gamaku refers primarily to the hips, or Koshi/Tanden.

The head must be up, chin tucked, spine straight and aligned with the legs, through the feet, into the ground, the solar plexus must be closed, hips tilted slighter forward/upward.
Power is generated from the ground up into the opponent and punches are supposed to generate hydro-static shock that plays on the fact that the Human Body is primarily made of water, thus a punch is not just a push, it has a purpose, it has an exact function.
Some refer to this as Fa Jing, but to many that term has quite a bit of mysticism surrounding it, basically all it means is hydrostatic shock off of techniques that are meant to work in such a way... A different type of Jing applies to smashing techniques, like elbow strikes.

Once a person peels away all the fluff of techniques names and starts looking at the bigger picture from the perspective of 'Principles' then they no longer see a whole slew of hundreds of different techniques, but variations on things like 'Hydrostatic Shock' and 'Smashing' and 'Pushing' and 'Pulling,' ect.
From there they can see the various ways in which to align for effective power generation.

Sensei once talked about the old saying that 'a punch is just a punch until it is no longer a punch and then it is a punch again,' it rings true, but in a different way than expected.
This is why we spend hours upon hours doing Sanchin and applying the principles learned from Sanchin to the rest of our Kata, at least in Goju Ryu.