a good tip to know that 13uRneR, thanks

well I dumped my attempted rig last week and started using the lowman animation rig (the one kiveun is using to great effect). It's a lot better than anything I can do and gives some cool control over the bodily parts.
I'm on very slow dialup this week (house sitting) so cant get a current animation up yet. Hopefully that will come on monday. All I can say is that it is a wind up punch trying to use compression of the body before the strike (I've been doing lots of compression techniques at sabre classes over the last couple of months and that is infuencing the punch).

Si