This sounds like a stupid question, but in a sense, yes you can charge up a punch.

Heads up, this may be oversimplified. Your nervous system prevents you from using an entire muscle group at once. When you lift something, your individual muscle fibers take turns. If the item is light, these fibers take long breaks due to how many are needed to lift the item. If you are lifting something heavy, your fibers have fewer breaks.

You can train your body to use more of your muscle fibers initially. There have been instances of parents lifting entire cars to save their children. Adrenaline dont provide power, but rather unlock the abilities of your muscles. Some of your muscles would snap associated bones if the fibers were all used at once, which is why people can’t do this in most circumstances.

But yeah, if you were to manage to train your body for it, you might be able to perform a punch using all of the associated fibers in the muscle groups involved, at great physical damage to yourself. I mean that or working out to build the muscles will charge your punches in a sense. That’s not an exciting answer though.

Yeah it’s something you have to pay for tho. It’s a dlc.

Ehhhh, kinda.

But it isn’t like in games.

You can train, and learn how to put your entire body behind the strike. But you don’t just stand there like a dummy and wait until your bar is full.

What you’re doing is learning how your body works on a practical level, how to generate power from your base and make it chain through everything from there to the striking surface. How you stand, how you launch a strike, it all adds up.

It’s also part of why body mass matters, even if it isn’t all muscle. Once you start your mass moving efficiently, you’re adding to the final force of the end strike. Send two bricks flying at the same speed, the heavier brick hits harder, which. Is a gross oversimplification, but it’s an illustrative example, not a precise one

Thing is, if you’re having to think about it, consciously controlling all of the movements, you’re slower, so you likely won’t get the strike to land because you got knocked the fuck out. You have to train it until that’s just how you strike.

Go watch some boxing clips. Look for whole body footage. You’ll see them loading up as they punch, with the rear foot providing the initial movement that goes up from there, into the hip, then the back, then the arm. It’s so fast and fluid with a pro that you’ll have to watch carefully, but it’s there. Part of the training is making it happen faster, with less telegraphing of your movement. Since a fighter with training and experience isn’t going to just be standing in place, you also have to watch their footwork.

How your feet are placed plays into the final strike. Again, watch boxers and you’ll notice that they move in a way to maximize the stability of their base so that they’re almost always ready to throw. You’ll see it in any martial art, but boxing eliminates other kinds of strikes, it’s only punches, and only with the front of the fist; so it’s easier to see it on camera than with mma where there’s kicks, elbows, takedowns and such.

That boxer dance is, effectively, them charging their punch. They stay light on their feet, constantly shifting from one stable stance to the next so that it only takes the decision to throw and the process starts, with power maximized.

You can even test it yourself with a bit of practice. Just mimic that movement and throw punches at a pad (ideally held by a training partner that can give feedback). When you’re launching your punch from a stable base, during the movement, applying the body mechanics, you can feel the difference. It doesn’t have to be perfect at all, you can be sloppy as hell, and you’ll still hit harder with the attempt at it than you will flat-footed. You’ll feel it in your hands, or your partner holding the pad will feel it.