hitting vs punching

hitting

noun
  • A series of hits or blows directed at a person or object. 

  • The batter's hitting improved with practice. 

punching

noun
  • An incident in which someone is punched. 

  • The process of making holes in something (for example, a leather belt or a rail ticket). 

How often have the words hitting and punching occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )